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THE 
SEVEN AGES OF WASHINGTON 



j^^^y^ 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




HouDOx\'s Statue of Washington, at Richmond, Va. 



THE SEVEN AGES OF 
WASHINGTON 

A BIOGRAPHY 

BY 

OWEN WISTER 

AUTHOR OF *«THE VIRGINIAN," ** LADY BALTIMORE," 
**U. S. GRANT A BIOGRAPHY,'* ETC., ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



Wetn gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1917 

jill rights reserved 



Copyright, 1907, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1907. Reprinted 
May, 1908; August, 1909 ; April, 1910; April, 1917. 



8. Cashing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



7f 



TO 

S. B. W, 

FROM 

HER SON 



PREFACE 

To an invitation from the University of Pennsylvania Preface 
this book is due. The Washington orator chosen for igoy 
found himself at a late hour compelled to renounce his 
task, and this honor fell from him upon me. Saving its 
scheme, little of the speech remains ,• English meant for 
the ear of an audience differs in fibre from English meant 
for the eye of a reader ; besides this, the limit of an 
address shuts out much that belongs to the subject. I 
had hoped to write this book short enough to be read in 
one comfortable sitting ; such brevity has proved beyond 
my skill. I have attempted a full-length portrait of 
Washington, with enough of his times to see him clearly 
against ; for this, his own writings, so admirably edited 
by Mr. Worthington Chauncey Ford in fourteen volumes, 
are the material. My other authorities are noted in a 
table at the end. Certain anecdotes, not before given 
to the public, are due to the kindness of friends and to 
some privately published memoirs. Many things that 
must have been in his letters to his wife, discreetly de- 
stroyed, we shall never know. 

Philadelphia, October 20, igoy. 



Vll 



CONTENTS 



I. Ancestry 

II. The Boy 

III. The Young Man 

IV. The Married Man 
V. The Commander 

VI. The President 

VII. Immortality 



XI 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



List of 
Illustrations 



Houdon's Statue of Washington, at Richmond, Va. 

SuLGRAVE Manor House. The Ancestral Home of the 
Washingtons 

Supposed Portrait of Mary Washington 

George Washington. From a portrait by C. W. Pealc 

Mount Vernon, Residence of Washington 

Martha Washington. From a painting by Gilbert 
Stuart 

Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge 

Portrait of Washington by Savage, 1789— 1790 
Reproduced by the courtesy of Harvard University 

Washington Monument 



XV 



THE SEVEN AGES OF WASHINGTON 

On the 22d of February, 1792, Congress Seven 
was sitting in Philadelphia, and to many ^^ ^. 
came the impulse to congratulate the Pres- 
ident upon this, his sixty-first birthday; 
therefore a motion was made to adjourn 
for half an hour, that this civility might be 
paid. The motion was bitterly opposed, 
as smacking of idolatry and as leaning tow- 
ard monarchy. Then it was the eighteenth 
century, it is the twentieth now; but when 
the 22d of February comes, the United 
States of America adjourn for a day to 
honor the memory of George Washington. 

At the present time it is odd to recognize 
that what did come to suffer by the idolatry 
so much feared by Congress, was not our 
republic, but the natural, manly, and human 
character of Washington in the hands of 
I 



Seven his early biographers. What was done, 

4r^-^ ?/ fQj. instance, to his letters in the generation 

Washington 

of our grandfathers, we grandsons would 

refuse to believe, were we merely told such a 

story; but to-day we can look at the original 

letters with our own eyes, and see the strange 

tricks that were played with them by their 

first editor. 

Washington wrote: "Our rascally priva- 
teersmen go on at the old rate;" "rascally'* 
was taken out in the printing as a word 
indecorous for the father of his country to 
be seen using. 

In another place: "Such a dearth of 
spirit pray God I may never witness again,'' 
becomes, "Such a dearth of spirit pray God's 
mercy I may never witness again." 

In still a third (the subject is a contem- 
plated appropriation): "One hundred thou- 
sand dollars will be but a flea-bite," is changed 
to, "one hundred thousand dollars will be 
totally inadequate." 

2 



By such devices was a frozen image of Seven 

George Washington held up for Americans Jf\^-^ 

® ° ^ Washington 

to admire, rigid with congealed virtue, 
ungenial, unreal, to whom from our school- 
days up we have been paying a sincere and 
respectful regard, but a regard without 
interest, sympathy, heart — or indeed, be- 
lief. It thrills a true American to the marrow 
to learn at last that this far-off figure, this 
George Washington, this man of patriotic 
splendor, the captain and savior of our 
Revolution, the self-sacrificing, devoted Pres- 
ident, was a man also with a hearty laugh, 
with a love of the theatre, with a white-hot 
temper, who when roused could (for ex- 
ample) declare of Edmund Randolph: "A 
damneder scoundrel God Almighty never 
permitted to disgrace humanity." 

The unfreezing of Washington was begun 
by Irving, but was in that day a venture so 
new and startling that Irving, gentleman 
and scholar, went at it gingerly and with 

3 



Seven many inferential deprecations. His hand, 

^^\°-^ however, first broke the ice, and to-day we 

Washington "^ 

can see the live and human Washington, 
full length. He does not lose an inch 
by it, and we gain a progenitor of flesh 
and blood. 

Between all great men there is one signal 
family likeness; so much is in them, such 
volume and variety, that by choosing this 
and leaving out that, portraits almost con- 
flicting could be made of the same character, 
each based wholly upon fact, yet not all the 
facts, and so a false picture of the man. 
From Julius Caesar could be drawn a prof- 
ligate and fashionable idler, rather vain of 
the verses which it was his desultory pleasure 
to compose. Out of Napoleon could be 
made a beneficent law-giver, warmly con- 
cerned with questions of education. To 
read the several journals that Washington 
wrote at Mount Vernon, you would scarce 
guess that public life engaged a moment of 
4 



his thought, or that he had ever seen a day's Seven 

fip-hting. The hints of greatness in those A^\: 
^ ^ ^ Washington 

pages are a huge energy, and a grasp of 
detail, a memory and attention for the small- 
est as well as the largest things, that leave 
one silent with wonder. But no direct sign 
of the soldier or statesman is there; the 
writer is apparently a breeder of horses, 
dogs, and sheep, a planter of trees and crops, 
generous to his relations and relations-in- 
law, with his slaves both humane and strict, 
most strict in his business duties to others, 
and in their business duties to him. He is 
also a constant sportsman, fox-hunter, and 
host, who is pleased to bid many welcome at 
his table, but dearly likes chosen friends to 
come in; and with these he takes a more 
familiar glass of Madeira. To the matter of 
wine he gives the same measured, minute 
attention that he gives to his fields, his 
horses, his rams, and all else. Twice he 
writes explicit directions about it, the second 

5 



Seven being as follows, in 1794, when his duties as 

^g^^ of President keep him absent from home: — ■ 

JVashingtoft 

"In a letter from Mrs. Fanny Washington 
. . . she mentions, that since I left Mount 
Vernon she has given out four dozen and 
eight bottles of wine ... I am led by it to 
observe, that it is not my intention that it 
should be given to every one who may 
incline to make a convenience of the house in 
• travelling, or who may be induced to visit it 
from motives of curiosity. There are but 
three descriptions of people to whom I think 
it ought to be given: first, my particular 
and intimate acquaintance, in case business 
should call them there, such for instance as 
Doctor Craik, 2dly, some of the most re- 
spectable foreigners who may, perchance, 
be in Alexandria or the federal city; and 
be either brought down, or introduced by 
letter, from some of my particular acquaint- 
ance as before mentioned; or thirdly, to 
persons of some distinction (such as mem- 
6 



bers of Congress, &c.) who may be travelling Seven 

through the country from North to South, or ,^^\°'' 

^ ^ ' Washington 

from South to North . . . Unless some cau- 
tion of this sort governs, I should be run to 
an expense as improper as it v^ould be con- 
siderable; — for the duty upon Madeira 
wine makes it one of the most expensive 
liquors that is now used, while my stock of 
it is small, and old w^ine (of which that is) 
is not to be had upon any terms : for which 
reason, and for the limited purposes already 
mentioned, I had rather you would provide 
claret, or other wine on which the duty is 
not so high, than to use my Madeira, unless 
it be on very extraordinary occasions. I 
have no objection to any sober, or orderly 
person's gratifying their curiosity in viewing 
the buildings, gardens, &c., about Mt. 
Vernon; but it is only to such persons as I 
have described that I ought to be run to any 
expense on account of these visits of curiosity, 
beyond common civility and hospitality. 

7 



Seven 
Ages of 
Washington 



No gentleman who has a proper respect for 
his own character (except relations and in- 
timates) would use the house in my absence 
for the sake of conveniency. . . ." 

Such orders are given about every item of 
his domestic and agricultural establishment, 
and this all through a period when his mind 
was deep in public matters of a most vexing 
and delicate kind, both at home and abroad; 
when he was writing long letters to Hamilton, 
to Jay, to Adams, to Congress, about our 
threatened relations with England, and the 
Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion. Nor were 
these letters dictated — they were in addition 
to those dictated; nor yet were they thin or 
of hasty judgment; they were as thorough as 
what he writes about his wine; and this 
radiation of energy and sagacity began with 
him before he was twenty, and continued 
during some forty-seven years until his 
death. Not seldom, in reading Washing- 
ton's correspondence, one pauses simply to 
8 



dwell upon the marvel of how such power Seven 

for work ever got itself into one human ,£^"^, 

• *^ Washington 

body. He judged himself well (his judg- 
ment was seldom wrong about anything) 
when in early life he wrote Governor Din- 
widdie : " I have a constitution hardy enough 
to encounter and undergo the most severe 
trials, and I flatter myself resolution to face 
what any man dares." 

With the many documents now come to 
light and a proper study and use of these, 
there could be readily made (if but words 
were painters' brushes and facts were colors) 
a gallery of portraits, each of Washington, 
and all faithful likenesses. His schoolboy 
face might then be seen, and how he looked 
in adolescence, when he was surveying for 
Lord Fairfax, and between whiles making 
love so precocious, continued, and apparently 
barren of reward. That older face which 
Stuart has given us, weather-beaten, war- 
beaten, deeply toned with retrospect, tells 

9 



Seven not of those far early Virginia days. And 

Ages of j^ truth, to sum up a man as he ends, or as 
Washington 

he begins, or at any single hour of his life, 

is to present but a fragment of him; for he 
is ceasing to be some things, while he is be- 
ginning to be other things; and it is all a 
ceasing, and a beginning, and an overlapping. 
Who could tell in August what the fruit tree 
was in May \ 

In the October of his days, Washington 
writes from Mt. Vernon: "The more I am 
acquainted with agricultural affairs, the 
better I am pleased with them.'* And in 
the November of his days: "To make and 
sell a little flour . . . and to amuse myself 
in . . . rural pursuits, will constitute my 
employment ... If also I could now and 
then meet the friends I esteem, it would fill 
the measure . . . ." Thus the Autumnal 
Washington; but when he was only April- 
old, he wrote: "My feelings are strongly 
bent to arms." And again: "I heard the 
10 



bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is Seven 

something charming in the sound." In ^^^ ^ 

Washington 

later years, he remarked, "If I said so, it 
was when I was young." The man himself 
had forgotten an earlier aspect of himself. 
Little, then, shall others understand of him 
who know only Washington the General, 
or Washington the President. 

Life plants no new seeds in a man, but the 
sun and the snow of the years both quicken 
and kill what seeds were in him at his birth, 
and thus the main trunk of character slowly 
grows. No more than Rome was the Com- 
mander-in-Chief of our Revolution built in a 
day; to stand that strain required beams and 
rafters of long seasoning, and if ever a char- 
acter got long seasoning, it was George Wash- 
ington's. To survey his sixty-seven years, 
it seems as if so much had never happened 
to any other man; certainly no American's 
life has been more crowded with extreme 
events — action and reflection galloping 
II 



Seven abreast through cities and wildernesses, bat- 

Jf\ ties and councils, dealing with a motley 

Washington ^ -^ 

throng of foreign noblemen, native neigh- 
bors, wrangling statesmen, starving soldiers, 
Indian chiefs, and negro slaves. 

"If I said that bullets had a charming 
sound, it was when I was young.'* Yes, 
when he was young; before the pitiful 
slaughter at Long Island, where he wrung his 
hands, saying, "Good God, what brave 
fellows I must this day lose;" and before 
he had learned to love the sound of the wind 
in his trees at Mount Vernon — in short be- 
fore the sun and snow had much beaten upon 
him, and while the beams and rafters were still 
unseasoned. Therefore, to draw as near 
him as we may across Time's wide silence, 
let our eyes travel back through the battles 
and councils, the foreign noblemen and 
starving soldiers, to his beginning. 



12 



I. ANCESTRY 



When we look among George Washing- Seven 

ton's forefathers — which somewhat late re- rr^ l- . 

Washington 

search has made easy, though it has not 
cleared every point — we see that he was 
like them, carried on their deeds and natures 
in himself, was less a surprise and departure 
in the family type than many a famous man 
has been; and this because his greatness lay 
in character. It is when genius steps in to 
procreation that the bird is of unaccountable 
feather, as in the case of Shakespeare. But 
wfc find Washington plain enough in his 
English ancestors. He came of good blood, 
county blood, blood that had fought and 
flowed for its king, had preached for its 
king, had been to college, that, in short, 
kn^w something of wars and something of 
books; that was allied with other good blood 

15 



Seven 
Ages of 
Washington 



of England, not the greatest, nor yet the 
least; that bore a coat-of-arms, which, un- 
translated from its quaint language, reads 
thus: Argent, two bars and in chief three 
mullets Gules. And among those who graced 
this coat-of-arms we find soldiers, knighted 
for gallantry in battle, and a preacher, who 
for sticking to his principles got into much 
trouble with the Roundheads. 

So there stand the ancestors: some with 
swords and some in gowns ; behind them, the 
fields of England with battle smoke and fair 
towers, and the painted shields of heraldry. 

Such was the boy's ancestral stuff, from 
such loins did he spring, through an emi- 
grant great-grandfather known in Virginia as 
Colonel John Washington, a public man, a 
man of circumstance. His seed did not fall 
away; the family held its high position, so 
that seventy-six years after the emigrant's 
coming, came his great-grandson George into 
a world where an established place, a re- 
i6 



spected name, and important friends were his Seven 

inheritance at birth. With him, a good en- ^f^\°^ 

^ IVasntngton 

vironment took up and fostered a good 
heredity: the happiest condition that can 
befall a new-born creature. Once on his 
legs, and his own master, the boy made 
himself worthy of his advantages, and coming 
from something, became more, — unlike much 
present-day American youth, who, coming 
from something, are nothing. But let us 
carefully remember that George Washington's 
advantages were no disadvantage to him; it 
is not ill to dwell on this. There is no harm 
in going from the tow-path to the White 
House ; the point is, what you do when you 
get there. Spread-eagle eloquence is apt to 
proclaim somewhat lopsided generalizations 
on this head, as if obscurity and poverty were 
virtues in themselves, and good descent and 
good up-bringing were crimes. There is 
nothing in all that, save hurtful imbecility; 
the truth being, that it is not bad to come 

17 



Seven 
Jges of 
Washington 



from silk purses unless you turn out a sow's 
ear yourself, nor yet bad to come from sow's 
ears if you turn into a silk purse yourself; 
but it would be a pity if the sow's ear be- 
came the symbol of our Republic. 

Let it be once more said (for it is of great 
interest, and has been by historians and 
biographers but scantily dwelt upon) that 
Washington was no meteoric phenomenon 
falling into a family unheralded from the sky, 
but very much the reverse, a consistent con- 
tinuance of the family pattern, precisely the 
kind of crop (only greater in size) to be 
expected from former harvests; soldiers 
who are knighted for valor, preachers who 
stick to their principles, come what may, — 
are not such precedents the very elements 
and fibre of George Washington ? He was 
their obvious, proper child, moulded large 
at birth; and into his strong grasp was put a 
great opportunity. In this coincidence lies 
the simple explanation of the man. 
i8 



II. THE BOY 




Supposed Portrait of Mary Wash 



INGTON. 



II 

In 1657 began the American Washingtons, Seven 
when two brothers, John and Lawrence, came 7^ ^• 
to Virginia and estabhshed themselves be- 
tween the Potomac and Rappahannock riv- 
ers, by Pope's creek. John became Colonel 
John in wars against the Indians, as, through 
similar wars in his turn, did his great-grand- 
son George become Colonel George. In 1694 
was born Augustine Washington, who be- 
came Captain Augustine, and was twice 
married. To him by his second venture 
(as he styles Mary Ball in his will) was born 
George at the family homestead in West- 
moreland county, on February 11, 1731, 
O. S., or February 22, 1732, by our present 
calendar. The child's earliest associations, 
however, were not here, but with the spot of 
21 



Seven his dearest and latest; for his parents, 

Jf\ before he could form memories, had gone to 

iVasntngton ^ 

live at their farm on the Potomac. Some 
ten years later the house, as we partly know 
it to-day, was built by George's elder half- 
brother Lawrence, whose inheritance it was, 
and who named it Mount Vernon from 
Admiral Vernon, with whom he had served 
as an officer at Carthagena. When the boy 
was eleven, Augustine his father died, and 
he went back to his birthplace, "Wake- 
field," where he lived with his half-brother 
Augustine until he was thirteen, going then 
to live with his mother near Fredericks- 
burg. In these young days, when he and 
his mother lived in straitened circumstances 
(the bulk of the estate being left to his half- 
brothers), Mary Washington seems to have 
been a very admirable, if not intellectual, 
parent for her son, beginning well the training 
of his character. In later days, her change 
of disposition and her conduct regarding 
22 



money caused him pain and mortification. Seven 

In certain of his letters to her, always be- ^^^ ^-^ 

Washington 

ginning "Honored Madam" according to the 
custom of their time, the language contains 
(and not wholly conceals) the struggle be- 
tween the man's displeasure and the son's 
natural respect and affection. Some of their 
paragraphs make distressing reading, and 
we turn away, leaving them unquoted. 

No more than about the boy's ancestors 
need we make any guesses about the boy. 
Though myths of which he is the hero are 
plentiful, and facts are few, these facts are 
strong in vividness and go far to drawing 
a distinct picture of him, and to giving it 
definite color as well. We had best not 
make too much, separately, of the rather 
uncertain legends concerning his deeds of 
strength, his taming of wild colts, his long 
throws, his high climbs; he was evidently 
well muscled from the first — though some- 
what lank and hollow chested, and with no 

23 



Seven ruddiness of face — and the value of the 

Jf\ legends is not their individual authenticity, 

Washington ^ ^ 

but their united testimony. Inappropriate 
anecdotes about anybody never survive: a 
saying attributed to Franklin will be canny, 
not dull; a story attributed to Lincoln will 
be humorous, not stupid; and it is sure that 
Washington as a boy possessed a body strong 
and energetic beyond the common, and that 
he gave much attention to its exercise. 

In children's games he seems to have 
shared like any other child, and that he 
played soldier and marshalled and drilled 
his playmates need scarce be counted a 
prophetic sign, even though it was he who 
mostly took the part of commander. He had 
seen his half-brother Lawrence making ready 
for real wars; to imitate was inevitable, and 
military sports have been frequent among 
generations of children who never came to 
fame either as soldiers or civilians. If we 
are looking for portents thus early, there is 
24 



something more in the fact that a few years Seven 

later, at the school in Fredericksburg, when J!^ , 

^ Washington 

the boy had become perhaps fourteen or 
fifteen, his schoolmates would come in from 
the playground with disputes for him to 
settle. They made the studious boy, solitary 
with his tasks indoors, their habitual umpire. 
In such a boy we may warrantably see the 
father of the man who fifty years later was 
often umpire between two members of his 
cabinet, and once wrote: "I have a great, a 
sincere regard and esteem for you both : and 
ardently wish that some line could be worked 
out by which both of you should walk." 

But why had the boy with the strong, 
well-exercised body become solitary indoors 
at this time ? His growing character might 
possibly have kept him apart, but not in- 
doors, and there is another reason which dis- 
penses with surmise. The means left his 
mother and her family of five living children 
was slender, and upon the young shoulders 

25 



Seven of George, the eldest, had already fallen their 

^^\ °^ burden of providing; for himself and for them. 

Washington ^ ^ 

One advantage common in that day to the 
sons of well-to-do Virginians did not fall to 
him, the eldest of the second family, but to 
his half-brother Lawrence, the eldest of the 
first marriage. Lawrence was sent to "finish 
his education" in England, but George had 
to renounce the luxury of "finishing" even 
at home, at William and Mary College, and 
to make ready by the readiest means to be- 
come the support of his mother and her 
children. Hence the indoor study, hence 
the solitude, both so marked as to have 
made an impression handed down by his 
schoolmate, Lewis Willis. In the manu- 
script of this gentleman's son. Colonel Byrd 
Willis, is the following passage about Wash- 
ington: "My father . . . spoke of the Gen- 
eral's industry and assiduity at school as 
very remarkable. Whilst his brother and 
other boys at playtime were at bandy and 
26 



other games, he was behind the door cipher- Seven 

inp;. But one youthful ebulHtion is handed ^^^ ^ 

° Washington 

down while at that school, and that was 
romping with one of the largest girls; this 
was so unusual that it excited no little com- 
ment among the other lads." 

And now, since portents when they are real 
are of the deepest significance, we do indeed 
come upon something worth more than a 
passing mention. To the boy making ready 
to support his mother, and denied the "finish- 
ing" of college at home or travel in England, 
fell a timely piece of good fortune: he re- 
ceived the "finishing" from an unexpected 
quarter; he came under the influence of a 
civilization more finely civilized than Eng- 
land's, more courteous, more restrained than 
eighteenth-century England knew. 

To any one familiar with Washington manu- 
scripts, that earliest, the school copy-book of 
1745, is well known. In spite of its some- 
what damaged state, it reveals faithfully and 
27 



Seven fully that Steadfast indoor ciphering which 

ur^ h ^^^ ^^ prepare him for supporting his mother. 

The various formal documents of business 
and book-keeping appear there, copied slowly 
in his boyish hand for the sake of securely 
mastering them, and here and there amid 
these careful transcriptions, a few scrawled 
pictures of those he sat in school with, and 
of birds of uncertain species. But even this 
evidence of whence began that habit and 
extraordinary power of method in practical 
affairs, which later served his country and 
himself so well, — even this is of secondary 
interest to the no rules of civility, also to be 
seen in this copy-book of 1745, written with 
more signs of haste than the transcribed 
bonds and receipts, as if from dictation. 
With these rules the boy's strong-built, 
rough, and passionate nature was deeply 
instilled before he stepped forth upon his 
adventurous journey in the world. The part 
they played in his life — since his public and 
28 



private acts show their spirit and teaching Seven 

at every turn — was of the first importance, «^^^^ 

Washington 

not to him alone, but also to his country. 
Moncure D. Conway, who has traced delight- 
fully and admirably the French origin and re- 
markable history of these rules, says regarding 
their influence upon Washington's character: 
"In the hand of that man of strong brain 
and powerful passions once lay the destiny 
of the New World, — in a sense, human 
destiny. But for his possession of the humil- 
ity and self-discipline underlying his Rules 
of Civility, the ambitious politicians of the 
United States might to-day be popularly 
held to a much lower standard." And to 
this it should be added, that from these 
rules and their moulding of Washington's 
character flowed his power of address 
— the consideration and the simplicity — 
which won for him, as it won for no other of 
his time, the esteem and devotion of those 
who could help our Revolution in the direst 
29 



Seven hours of its need. It is scarce worth ob- 

Jf\ serving that the coincidence of good seed and 

Washington ^ ^ 

good soil is always necessary, and that if 
Washington's character had not been the 
field, the rules would have been less fruitful. 
But it is well worth observing that they 
produced some fruit in two fairly barren 
characters: Madison and Monroe were also 
taught their good manners, and almost 
certainly by these same rules, at the Fred- 
ericksburg school, and Madison and Monroe, 
when examined close, have little to show but 
their courtesy, both being models equally of 
urbanity and incompetence. 

It was once supposed that Washington 
was himself the boy author of these rules; 
but they date from 1595 and before his day 
had known several translations, imitations, 
and plagiarisms, among which was an English 
version of 1640 entitled, "Youth's Behaviour, 
or Decency in Conversation amongst men. 
Composed in French by grave persons for 

30 



the Use and benefit of their youth. Now Seven 

newly translated into English by Francis A^\°-^ 

•' o y Washington 

Hawkins/' It is possible, as Mr. Conway 
shows, that what we find in the copy-book of 
1745 was the result of Washington's reading 
and amending Hawkins by himself. But 
the amendments seem too skilful for the boy of 
fourteen, and Mr. Conway's own theory seems 
almost a proven case. In 1729 there sailed 
to Virginia with his bride the Rev. James 
Marye. This gentleman had been educated 
for the priesthood, and thus must inevitably 
have met the rules, which were a manual 
among the religious colleges of France. But 
he became a Huguenot, and hence an emi- 
grant, settling at first in King William Par- 
ish. In 1735 he was called to St. George's, 
Fredericksburg, where he set up a school, 
created a large congregation, and died in 
1767. To his school went many eminent 
Virginians, besides those already named, 
and the good manners of several generations 

31 



Seven of boys brought James Marye and his school 

Jf\ into high respect and reputation, for he 

Washington fe r r > 

taught civility as a branch of education, as 
he taught arithmetic. As the rules in the 
copy-book show a correspondence with Haw- 
kins sometimes, but more often with the 
original French, and as Washington's hand- 
writing here gives signs of haste and correction 
that do not elsewhere appear, it points to 
the conclusion that the maxims were dictated 
to his boys by James Marye, who availed 
himself, now of Hawkins, and again (and 
more often) of the original treatise that 
emanated from the pensionnaires of the 
College of La Fleche in 1595, with the title 
Bienseance de la Conversation entre les 
Hommes. Let us remember with gratitude 
and regard the Huguenot emigrant, an exile 
because of his high principles, who brought 
these principles to benefit our shores, and 
became the founder of an honorable family, 
and the wise teacher of American youth. 
32 



For the interest of it, we cite three parallel Seven 
versions of one of these maxims : — A^\ 



Washington 



Washington's copy-book, 20th R ule. " The 
Gestures of the Body must be Suited to the 
discourse you are upon/' 

Hawkins i. 30. "Let the gestures of the 
body be agreeable to the matter of thy dis- 
course. For it hath been ever held a sol- 
oesime in oratory, to poynt to the Earth, 
when thou talkest of Heaven/' 

Original French. " Parmy les discours 
regardez a mettre vostre corps en belle 
posture." 

Were there space here for all the maxims 
they should be given, so quaint are they in 
phrase, so sound in foundation, resting upon 
the deep moral principle of consideration 
for others, and many of them appHcable with- 
out change to modern requirements. But 
fragments of them must suffice: — 

33 



Seven " Be not immodest in urging your Friends 

Ages of ^ ^' ^ ,, 

„, , -^ to discover a secret. 



Washington 



"Wear not your Cloths foul, unript, or 
dusty." 

"Sleep not when others Speak, Sit not when 
others stand, Speak not when you should 
hold your Peace, walk not when others Stop.'* 

"Superfluous Complements and all Affec- 
tation of Ceremony are to be avoided, yet 
where due they are not to be Neglected." 

"Read no Letters, Books, or Papers in 
Company but when there is a Necessity for 
the doing of it you must ask leave : come 
not near the Books or Writings of Another 
so as to read them unless desired . . . look 
not nigh when another is writing a Letter." 

"Speak not of doleful things in a time of 
mirth." 

"Talk not with meat in your mouth." 

"Labour to keep alive in your breast that 
little Spark of Celestial fire called Con- 



science." 



34 



Such were the precepts that Washington Seven 

copied as a boy of fourteen, and they entered ,£^^, '^^ 
* -' Washington 

Hke leaven into that young lump of strength. 
"Your future character and reputation 
[he writes, forty-three years afterward to a 
nephew] will depend very much, if not entirely, 
upon the habits and manners which you 
contract in the present period of your life." 
These words are not the facile commonplaces 
of an elderly man moralizing to a youth; they 
indicate that Washington was entirely aware 
of the great influence for good exerted upon 
his own character by the Rules of Civility. 
It is a misfortune for all American boys in all 
our schools to-day, that they should be told 
the untrue and foolish story of the hatchet 
and cherry tree, and denied the immense 
benefit of instruction from George Washing- 
ton's authentic copy-book. 

Ornamental knowledge he had no op- 
portunity for (with life's necessities pressing 
him so near), and very likely he showed small 

35 



Seven leaning to it. It is plain that his business 

^^\°^ bent was already strong, in him, and that 

Washington 

beyond the necessity, his own instinct chose 
the line of bonds and receipts, rather than of 
literature and history. And yet they have 
been quite wrong who at various times have 
asserted that he was an ignorant man of but 
small reading. That he read for practical 
purposes more than for entertainment is 
undoubtedly true, and that he held a very 
humble opinion of his own taste and judg- 
ment in literary matters is equally so — yet 
how interesting is this passage in a letter 
written to Lafayette in 1788 ! — 

"... Such are your Antient Bards who 
are both the priest and door-keepers to 
the temple of fame. And these, my dear 
Marquis, are no vulgar functions . . . heroes 
have made poets, and poets heroes. Alex- 
ander the Great is said to have been en- 
raptured with the Poems of Homer. . . . 
Julius Caesar is well known to have been a 

36 



man of highly cultivated understanding and Seven 

taste. . . . The Augustan Age is prover- ,^^\°-' 

^ t5 r Washington 

bial ... in it the harvest of laurels and 
bays v^as wonderfully mingled together. . . . 
The age of your Louis the fourteenth, v^hich 
produced a multitude of great poets and great 
Captains, v^ill never be forgotten; nor v^ill 
that of Queen Ann ... for the same cause. . . . 
Perhaps we shall be found at this moment, 
not inferior to the rest of the world in the 
performances of our poets and painters; 
notwithstanding many of the incitements are 
wanting which operate powerfully among 
older nations. For it is generally under- 
stood, that excellence in those sister Arts 
has been the result of easy circumstances, 
public encouragements and an advanced stage 
of society. ... I hardly know how it is 
that I am drawn thus far in observations on 
a subject so foreign from those in which 
we are mostly engaged, farming and poli- 
tics " 

37 



Seven It is not an ignorant man who writes thus. 

g^^ V Somehow at sometime duung his Hfe so full 

Washington ^ 

of sword and of plough, he had considered the 
poets and heroes, and the question of sub- 
sidized art, although the scanty glimpses 
that he gives of this consideration make us, 
who would know him wholly, regret that he 
was not more often "drawn thus far in ob- 
servations on a subject so foreign.'' 

At the age of fourteen — the age of the 
copy-book — he had a wish to enter the navy, 
which his mother opposed, and he therefore 
went on with his school and his mathematics, 
which led him to the study of surveying — a 
very important fact in his destiny. It was 
probably now, after his disappointment 
about the navy, that his home responsibilities 
grew clear to his conscience and that he 
absented himself from the playground for 
the sake of harder study. The girls used to 
wish that he would talk more; "he was a 
very bashful young man,'* is the recorded 

38 



opinion of one of them in later life; yet Seven 

some girl had already disturbed his dawnino; ^^^ ^ 

° Washington 

passion. Presently he was writing verses, 
though of a quality scarce equal to his mathe- 
matics. 

" Oh ye Gods why should my Poor resistless Heart 
Stand to oppose thy might and power — 

t* *t* •!* ^jt S|C 

" In deluding sleepings let my eyelids close 

That in an enraptured dream I may 
In a rapt lulling sleep and gentle repose 

Possess those joys denied by day," 

Other lyrics to other ladies are found in his 
early writing, but maturer passion ended by 
expressing itself in prose. 

Such was the boy: of vigorous flesh, of 
grave spirit rendered graver by necessity, a 
respected umpire of school-ground disputes, 
a romantic follower of the fair sex; his hair 
was brown, his eye blue gray, not flashing 
but steady, and he had a nose that his friends 
must have hoped he would grow up to. " 

39 



III. THE YOUNG MAN 




George Washington. 
From a portrait by C. W. Peale. 



Seven 
Ages of 
Washington 



III 

So his schooldays ended, and with them 
not indeed his education, for this was just 
begun; but schoolmasters and copy-books 
were over, and the apron-string was broken. 
It was not beneath his mother's roof any 
more, but at Mount Vernon, with his brother 
Lawrence, that his home was to be. Here 
he was to turn his studies in surveying to prac- 
tical account, and to practical account also 
the rules of civility. The working of these in 
his character and demeanor brought him that 
next experience, that next education, which 
may be set among the chief advantages of his 
youth. It would seem that the Mount Vernon 
neighborhood was poor in gentlefolk com- 
pared to Fredericksburg, and that the man- 
ners and breeding of this young Washington, 

43 



Seven who had come here to live, shone out, and won 



Ages of 
Washington 



for him at once the notice of an older man of 
high position and noble nature. Lord Fairfax 
lived on his estate adjoining Mount Vernon. 
Belvoir, his place (pronounced Beaver), 
could be seen from there across Dogue Run, 
the little tributary of the Potomac so often 
mentioned by Washington in his diaries. The 
boy surveyor — he was not yet quite sixteen 
— spent his steady working hours in going 
about over his brother Lawrence's lands, 
running lines with admirable pains and 
accuracy, and his holidays he took in hunting 
the fox. That he relaxed himself between- 
whiles sometimes in the composition of verse, 
full of the sighs of unrequited love, is less 
remarkable at sixteen than the quality of his 
surveyor work. He fell in with Lord Fairfax 
while surveying as well as while hunting, 
and the nobleman admired the energy which 
the lad put into both work and play — but 
it may very well be that what endeared the 
44 



young surveyor to his lordship was the Seven 

gallant manner in which he took his fences. ^^^ ^ 

^ Washington 

" Let your recreations be Manfull not Sinfull," 
says Rule 109 in the copy-book. And so 
Washington's pluck, and his good, modest 
manners, brought Fairfax to make him his 
frequent companion in hunting and his guest 
at Belvoir, where there were well-bred women, 
and Addison's essays, and all was of a piece 
of the same sound mellow civilization. In 
this good society the boy of sixteen grew 
steadily into a man of the world (though of 
his bashfulness he never became complete 
master, and we shall see this later upon sev- 
eral occasions), and he also learned in farming 
and agriculture those standards of English 
thoroughness which he endeavored to main- 
tain later in the midst of the American 
slackness that prevailed then, as it prevails 
to-day. What he learned among the ladies 
who lived or visited at Belvoir came as nat- 
urally to him and was retained as tenaciously 

45 



Seven by his instinct and his memory as the out- 

J^^\ door knowledge, the planting, harvesting, 

fencing, gates, hinges, and all else with which 
Lord Fairfax's talk must have abounded, 
while the older man and the young rode leis- 
urely across country together after a hunt. 
Fairfax was bound to comment upon the 
slovenly American farming that they passed 
by at such times. 

Surely his lordship gave the boy a mount 
now and then! Surely he sometimes said: 
"There's a young horse at Belvoir you had 
better try and see if he will do for the ladies." 
It is agreeable to think of those huntings; 
of the hounds scudding over Virginia's 
pleasant hills, and hard behind them the 
ruddy-faced nobleman, with George not 
quite abreast of him (Rule 57: "In walking 
. . . with ... a man of Great quality, walk 
not with him cheek by jowl, but somewhat 
behind him ") — George therefore keeping 
himself a respectful second, controlling the 

46 



sinful desires of the spirit to be first — and Seven 

some love verses forgotten in his pocket. S\ 

° ^ Washington 

Then in the field corners, by the edges of the 
covers, stopping to bite a sandwich, surely his 
lordship would bid the boy come up for a pull 
at his own flask, and surely the boy, after 
a proper hesitation, would take the pull! 
(Rule 40: "Strive not with your superiors in 
argument.") And so the two ride home, 
talking together after the hunt; perhaps the 
boy stops to sup at Belvoir with Lord Fairfax, 
or perhaps the hunt has taken them to the 
other side of the country, and Lord Fairfax 
sups and sleeps at Mount Vernon ; and as he 
and his host, Lawrence Washington, light 
their bedroom candles, and part for the night, 
his Lordship says: — 

"Your brother's a fine lad, Mr. Washing- 
ton. We must do something for him. Sir." 

And the eyes of the elder brother fill with 
tenderness and pride at the remark of Lord 
Fairfax, for he knows it to be true. In the 

47 



Seven character of the boy he had brought from 

r^f\ Fredericksburg, to give a start in Hfe if he 

Washington ^ ^ 

could, he had soon discerned a jewel of great 
price, and his hopes and his love v^ere set 
upon him. 

Next, Lord Fairfax "does something" 
for young George, makes him surveyor of 
his great back lands, and the happy boy of 
sixteen gets on his horse and rides forth to 
his career. The day is marked in his diary. 
"Fryday March nth, 1747-8 Began my 
Journey in company with George Fairfax, 
Esqr. ; we travell'd this day 40 miles to Mr. 
George Newels in Prince William County.*' 

That he knew these days for happy ones is 
not likely, for his nature was not the sort 
that sits estimating the present moment in 
reflection, but rather fills it with action; 
yet in his writings the joy of the new adven- 
ture is plain. 

"Dear Richard . . . Since you received 
my letter in October last, I have not sleep'd 

48 



above three nights or four in a bed, but, Seven 
after walking a good deal all the day, I lay ^^ /! 
down before the fire upon a little hay, straw, 
fodder or bearskin . . . with man, wife and 
children, like a parcel of dogs and cats; and 
happy is he who gets the berth nearest the 
fire." 

Only the man that in his youth has known 
camping, and the joy that comes to him who 
in many months of the wilderness has not 
"sleep'd above three nights or four in a bed," 
can comprehend the delight of life which the 
young Washington knew at this time. When 
in afteryears he saw these Fairfax days — 
the backwoods surveyings and the home- 
comings to his friend's house — saw this in 
the far horizon of the past, across the great 
anxieties, disasters, and triumphs that lay 
between himself and his youth, it is thus that 
we find him writing: — 

"... None of which events, however, 
nor all of them together, have been able to 

49 



Seven eradicate from my mind the recollection of 

^^ ^ those happy moments, the happiest in my 

life, which I have enjoyed in your company 
. . . and it is matter of sore regret, when I 
cast my eyes towards Belvoir, which I often 
do, to reflect, the former inhabitants of it, 
with whom we lived in such harmony and 
friendship, no longer reside there, and that 
the ruins can only be viewed as the memento 
of former pleasures." 

These touching and revealing words were 
written from Mount Vernon, May i6, 1798, 
after he had been twice President, to Mrs. 
Sarah Fairfax in England, where she had 
gone to live. She was the widow of that 
George Fairfax with whom he began his 
surveying journey on that "Fryday" the 
nth of March, fifty years before. 

He had forgotten the sorrows of that 
earlier time, of which the following letter 
will give us a smiling glimpse : — 

"Dear Friend Robin . . . My place of 

50 



residence is at present at his Lordship's, Seven 
where I might, was my heart disengaged ^^'' '^ 

^ ^ ' Washington 
pass my time very pleasantly as there's a 

very agreeable young lady lives in the same 
house. ... But as that's only adding fuel 
to fire, it makes me the more uneasy, for by 
often and inevitably, being in company with 
her revives my former passion for your 
Lowland beauty; whereas, was I to live more 
retired from young women, I might in some 
measure eliviate my sorrows, by burying the 
chaste and troublesome passion in the grave 
of oblivion. ..." 

Buried it was not, at once; on the con- 
trary, the lover orders, with as many careful 
and exact details as if it were a survey, a 
highly fashionable coat to be made for him : 
"... on each side six buttonholes . . . 
the waist from the armpit to the fold to be 
exactly as long or longer than from thence to 
the bottom. ..." This is only a part, less 
than a third, of his directions about this 
51 



4?^-^ of snrvpv ? 

Washington 



Seven coat, and does it not read remarkably fike a 

survey 

But coat and all, he did not win his Low- 
land beauty (whoever she was, for later 
guesses fit the facts imperfectly), and it is 
plain that he followed now the most usual 
and most wholesome course of youth — 
cured one love-wound by receiving another. 
The next lady refused him twice, we know, 
how many more times we do not know; but 
when this case proved hopeless too, young 
George again had recourse to the like-cures- 
like treatment, and not for the last time. 
With him it would seem to have proved 
invariably successful. 

Why was he so unlucky in these affairs } 
Why did he so fail to win young women's 
hearts \ He was strong, athletic, tall, a 
daring rider, his manliness had won the 
hearts of his brother and Lord Fairfax. 
What, then, was the matter t It is hard to 
come at the reason, and very likely there is 
52 



no one reason. In his favor he had those Seven 

personal attributes just enumerated, and Jf\^-!^ 
* _ "^ Washington 

beyond these, the pubHc mark he was already 
beginning to make. Appointed pubHc sur- 
veyor very soon, at the instance of Lord 
Fairfax, before he v^as twenty he had the 
position of adjutant-general with the rank 
of Major. These are bright trophies to 
flourish in the eyes of the fair. But we may 
be sure that he did not flourish them, that 
the modesty and respectfulness which so 
commended him to his elderly patron still 
always became bashfulness when with a 
young woman; it is moreover possible that 
his gravity, his lack of quick light talk, 
frightened them off when it came to tying 
themselves to it for life. And last, but least 
by no means, let us remember his nose. It 
was a formidable feature — it never ceased 
to be so — and in these budding days of 
manhood, it beaked out of that young face 
in overweening scale. Corresponding to this 

53 



Seven iiose without, was a character within, huge, 

^" / forcible, out of scale with the immature years 

Washington 

and experience of its possessor. Perhaps the 
reader has at some time known a friend or 
acquaintance who was more symmetrical at 
thirty than at twenty, who was slow in grow- 
ing up to himself. Not a few men are so, 
and when a creature of Washington's moral 
dimensions comes upon earth, his early 
personality is sure to be somewhat ungainly. 
Moreover, he is certain to crowd those who 
are near him without meaning it, or even 
knowing it. With the best of intentions, with 
the most real modesty, Washington must 
have been not seldom an uncomfortable, 
unwieldy companion among those of his 
own age. If we think these things over, 
we feel that we may understand why the 
girls would not have him. 

His minute directions about a coat have 
been seen above, and this care as to dress 
never left him. A proper appearance was 
54 



one of the many things to which his mind, in Seven 

due proportion, attended, and almost always ^^^ y 

^ ^ •' Washington 

with that same precision of detail which he 
gave to all the multitudinous matters, public 
and private, that he took up. So it was with 
the harness for his horses, and his carriage; 
we can find numerous directions written to 
England about his wife's clothes ! If the 
Lowland beauty and her several successors 
had ever the faintest inkling that their suitor 
would supervise their petticoats and far- 
thingales, we need speculate no further why 
they one and all dismissed him. In the 
general panorama of orders about apparel 
that mingles with his writings, the most 
interesting trait of all is the appropriate- 
ness; as he grows older, he orders more 
sober garments. At no period, young or 
old, is it common to find him as unspecific 
as this ; — 



55 



Washington 



Seven " FoRT CUMBERLAND, I4 May, I 755. 

^gfsof ccDear Brother: 

"As wearing boots is qtiite the mode, and 
mine are in a declining state, I must beg the 
favor of you to procure me a pair that is 
good and neat.*' 

There is one more word to say about the 
surveys of this frequent young lover; they 
suffered no neglect through the preoccupa- 
tions of his heart. So accurate they were, 
that to this day they stand unquestioned, 
wherever found. 

What did they for his character } — Sleep- 
ing (as he records) in "one thread bear 
blanket with double its weight of vermin," 
or lodging *' where we had a good dinner . . . 
wine and Rum punch in plenty, a good 
Feather Bed with clean sheets,'' or having 
"our tent carried quite off with ye wind," 
or meeting Indians coming from war, who 
entertain him with a war-dance, jumping 

56 



" about ye Ring in a most cornicle manner." Sev'in 

It was the apprenticeship, the seasoning; ^£^"^, 

^^ ^ ^ Washington 

he was learning the alphabet of Trenton and 
Valley Forge, personal discomfort was noth- 
ing to his body or his mind that loved a pretty 
coat on the proper occasion. His rides, his 
camps, his river swimming and rough wander- 
ing brought him close to those who were to be 
his soldiers hereafter, and brought them close 
to him; he and Virginia learned to know 
each other. He became a woodsman, a path- 
finder, a shrewd judge of wild country and of 
wild human nature, he wore an Indian hunt- 
ing shirt — but remained civilized all the 
while. For Lord Fairfax was always there 
to come home to from the log-cabins; 
Lord Fairfax at Belvoir, or at Greenway 
Court his new place, and Lawrence Wash- 
ington at Mount Vernon, and their visitors, of 
good manners and urbane knowledge of the 
great world — gentlemen and ladies — a so- 
ciety to hold the backwoods surveyor to his 

57 



Seven Standards; and there were the books also, 

Jr\ 'T'he Spectator, and other sound volumes that 

PVasntngton ^ 

he evidently read beneath their roofs. Thus, 
while the wilderness entered into his strong 
body, many wholesome things entered into 
his strong brain, and tenaciously stayed 
there. 

To us, because we never saw him, it is 
wonderful to find him adjutant-general of his 
district at twenty; that is the age when our 
present privileged youth is carrying brokers' 
messages, or stealing signs at college. It 
was not wonderful to those who did see him 
— his appointment was made easily. After 
this, it is less wonderful (since we begin to 
perceive how large his figure was growing in 
the community) to find him at twenty-two 
chosen by the Governor of Virginia to go to 
the agitated frontier upon a general mission of 
pacification among the French, the Indians, 
and the restless colonists. His dear brother 
Lawrence was now dead, whose health for 

58 



some years had been failing. A journey to Seven 

the Barbadoes had not brought Lawrence the ^^^\ 

^ IVashtngton 

Strength he had sailed there to seek, while 
to George who accompanied him (the only 
occasion when Washington was ever absent 
from our continent) it had brought small- 
pox, of which his face carried the marks all 
his life. But young Washington had passed 
beyond the need of any protector. He re- 
turned from his mission to the Ohio — 
Venango, Duquesne, let them here be named 
— having come safe through many pitfalls 
of Indian treachery, French diplomacy, and 
frozen rivers. 

"There was no way [he writes] for getting 
over but on a Raft; which we set about 
with but one poor hatchet. . . . Before we 
were half way over we were jammed in the 
Ice . . . the Rapidity of the Stream . . . 
jerked me out into ten feet of Water." Does 
this not seem like the wintry wraith of Tren- 
ton, prophetically rising ^ 

59 



Seven "Our horses were now so weak . . . and 

Irlhington ^^^ ^^gg^g^ so h^^^y • • • myself and others 
. . . gave up our Horses for Packs ... I 
put myself in an Indian walking dress, and 
continued with them three Days.'' 

"Queen Aliquippa . . . expressed great 
concern that we had passed her. ... I 
made her a present of a Matchcoat and a 
Bottle of Rum; which latter was thought 
much the best present of the Two.'' 

These few lines are from many pages re- 
cording that journey; pages of hardihood, 
caution, and resource, with now and then a 
slight suggestion of amusement, like Queen 
Aliquippa and the rum. 

Thus Major Washington came out from 
the backwoods, and into the backwoods was 
sent again almost at once, but now as Lieu- 
tenant-colonel Washington. All Virginia 
knew now that she had found a man. They 
wished him to head the troops raised to pro- 
tect the king's land, but he wrote: ''The 
60 



command of the whole force ... is a charge Seven 
too great for my youth and Inexperience.'' ^^^ ^ 
"Dear George/' was the reply, "I enclose 
you your commission. God prosper you 
with it." So he was made second in com- 
mand, but through the death of his superior 
officer became first before the campaign was 
over. 

God did prosper him — though not in 
ways immediately visible — for the alphabet 
of preparation went on, — the severe alphabet 
of responsibility, injustice, privation, defeat. 
These, with hard recruiting, scarce horses, 
scarce men, and stingy pay, were his next 
apprenticeship. Washington, a colony Colo- 
nel, was paid less than a king's captain, 
and was moreover looked down upon by the 
king's captain; it was his first taste of that 
dull superciliousness in the mother country 
toward her own flesh and blood across the 
sea, which ended in the estrangement and 
loss of that flesh and blood for ever. 
6i 



Seven "I have not offered," Washington writes 

Jf\ Governor Dinwiddie, "to control Captain 

Washington 

Mackay in anything . . . but, sir, two com- 
manders are . . . incompatible. . . . He 
thinks you have not a power to give commis- 
sions that will command him . . . that it is not 
in his power to oblige his men to work upon 
the road . . . whilst our faithful soldiers 
are laboriously employed. ... I am much 
grieved to find our stores so slow advanc- 
' ing. God knows when we shall be able to 
do anything for to deserve better of our 
country.*' 

There we have it vivid after a hundred and 
fifty years — the English officer nasty to his 
American superior officer, and the English 
enlisted man nasty to his fellow-American 
enlisted man, lounging by and letting him do 
the dirty, digging work! We need to-day 
no longer take the stilted, absurd view taught 
us in our schoolbooks, that England was 
a "tyrant" and a "despot" to us; the facts 
62 



will not bear it. Every American every day Seven 

is sufferinp; ten times the tyranny from trusts ^^!\ 

^ J ^ Washington 

and labor-unions that we suffered from Eng- 
land before the Revolution; but between 
those lines of Washington's letter to Din- 
widdie, we catch a flash of that intolerable 
attitude of the Englishman to the American 
then, whose exasperating efi^ect really did 
more to throw the tea into Boston harbor 
and to write the Declaration of Independence 
than all the acts of Parliament put together. 
But how bright does the young Washington 
shine out in that last burst of fervor, where 
the little homely turn of grammar seems 
somehow only to make him the more engag- 
ing! "God knows when we shall be able 
to do anything for to deserve better of our 
country." 

Yes ; the alphabet of preparation was going 
on, was even forming into words ; though as 
compared with Trenton and Valley Forge, 
those future days when the weight and the 

63 



Seven fate of a nationwfere to hang like a millstone 

^^^ 'y about his neck, such words seem of but one 

Washington 

syllable. He tasted defeat in this Great 
Meadows campaign, and perfidy of colleagues, 
and the ingratitude of Dinwiddie — severe 
but wholesome flavors for the future loser 
of Long Island and Brandywine, the future 
comrade of Gates, Conway, and Charles 
Lee. Good reason had he likewise to lament 
his total ignorance of French, since trusting 
to interpreters led to a number of crooked 
results, by which his reputation was 
clouded for a while. So once again he 
marched back from Venango and Duquesne 
with his new harvest of experience, meagre 
supplies, scarce horses, faithless allies, his 
conduct questioned — and in the end no 
victory. Yet, when all was sifted clear, he 
came out of it so honorable and efficient 
amid the general mismanagement, that the 
Legislature voted him public thanks. His 
ups and downs in favor also resemble the days 

.64 



to come, when Congress at one moment was Seven 

for superseding him, and at the next made him ^^^ ^ 

Washington 
mihtary dictator. He got at this time, too, 

an Indian name, as later, by the British, he 

came to be known as "the Old Fox''; — but 

by that time he no longer spoke of any place 

as "a charming field for an encounter," as 

he spoke of Great Meadows in his unwhetted 

enthusiasm. It was now that his young 

blood took joy in the sound of bullets, and 

that he wrote of his strength : " I have a 

constitution hardy enough to encounter and 

undergo the most severe trials." We may 

be quite sure that enormous enjoyment was 

constantly his, and that peril and the meeting 

it salted his many troubles ; and also we may 

suspect it was the mental trials of having 

his conduct questioned, more than any 

bodily hardships, that caused the "loss of 

health" he soon speaks of, — nor was the 

"loss" a heavy one. It looks as if young 

Colonel Washington had that impatience of 

65 



Seven 
Ages of 
Washington 



any ailment, so common to men who are 
almost invariably well, and that he took his 
present indisposition with undue gravity. 

Of English superciliousness and insolence 
he began to have repeated experiences, the 
king's officers being the offenders; and it is 
no surprise to find him thoroughly roused by 
the mean offer of a nondescript sort of rank, a 
compromise, carrying no pay — this in the 
face of the recent vote of thanks for his 
services in the Great Meadows campaign, 
where the responsibilities of chief in com- 
mand had devolved upon him. In answer to 
such an affront, he writes: "If you think me 
capable of holding a commission that has 
neither rank nor emolument annexed to it, 
you must entertain a very contemptible 
opinion of my weakness, and believe me to 
be more empty than the commission itself." 
So he goes indignant to Mount Vernon (now 
become his own), but it is not for long. Again, 
in spite of his mother, he is off to the French 
66 



and Indian wars, wishing "earnestly to attain Seven 

some knowledge in the military profession S^\^-^ 

^ ^ ^ Washington 

. . . under a gentleman of General Brad- 
dock's abilities and experience." 

Thus he marches to another encounter 
with adversity — the worst yet. Again it is 
the old backwoods trail, again Great Mead- 
ows, and again Venango and Duquesne, 
whose sounding names seem to ring like bells 
of omen through the time of Washington's 
apprenticeship. This expedition repeated, in 
greater dimensions, the trials and lessons of 
its predecessor; British insolence, British 
stupidity, with failure and catastrophe as 
the upshot. Braddock applied to the back- 
woods, against Indians, just the same methods 
of warfare he had known in settled commu- 
nities with travelled roads, against white men, 
and he by no means thanked Washington 
for offering suggestions about the habits of 
Indians, and the trackless character of the 
country. 

67 



Seven 
Jges of 
Washington 



It has often been said, and is said still, 
that Washington had no humor; but this has 
been pushed too far — to the point, indeed, 
of attributing to him an eternal gravity of 
appearance and a stiffness of spirit that 
never stooped so low as fun. Let us provide 
him with no trait he does not himself disclose, 
but neither let us rob him of any. Early 
in this lamentable Braddock expedition, he 
writes of an escort of eight men he had with 
him: "Which eight men were two days 
assembling, but I believe would not have 
been as many seconds dispersing if I had been 
attacked." And about this same time: "I 
have at last discovered . . . why Mrs. Ward- 
rope is a greater favorite of Genl. Brad- 
dock than Mrs. F — . . . . Nothing less, I 
assure you than a present of delicious cake 
and potted Woodcocks!" Washington had 
a sense of fun, could be on occasion sedately 
jocular, and also (as shall be seen) could be 
surprised into outbursts of hilarity as violent 
68 



as his occasional outbursts of rage. His un- Seven 

doubtedly restricted sense of humor was of ^^^ ^ 

Washington 

its day, eighteenth century; and a retort of 
Goldsmith's to Dr. Johnson, while they were 
discussing the doctor's ability to write a 
fable about little fish, might fit the Father of 
our Country well: "Why, Doctor, you could 
never write a fable about little fish, you would 
make them talk like whales !" 

Upon this expedition Washington added to 
his experience of military blundering, civil 
incompetence, political jealousy, and starving 
commissariat, a very valuable new piece of 
knowledge — that British soldiers could run 
away. He says: "The dastardly behavior 
of the Regular troops (so called) exposed 
those who were inclined to do their duty to 
almost certain death. ... I tremble at 
the consequence this defeat may have upon 
our back settlers." But before the end, 
before his own miserable catastrophe and 
death, poor British Braddock dropped his 

69 



Seven superciliousness, and learned to respect his 

^^\°-^ young Virginia aide. Washington has left 

Washington J ^ ^ & 

words about him both friendly and just. 

Once more he was at Mount Vernon, but 
busy, scraping troops together, after four 
bullets through his coat and two horses shot 
under him, with such a record of bravery 
shining through the clouds of Braddock's 
misfortune, that a clergyman, in a sermon, 
preached in Virginia and printed in Phila- 
delphia and London, says: "That heroic 
youth. Colonel Washington, whom I can not 
but hope Providence has hitherto preserved 
in so signal a manner for some important 
service to his country.'' How strange seems 
the petulant complaint of John Adams in 
after days, that Washington owed his dis- 
tinction to having married a rich wife ! He 
was now appointed commander-in-chief of 
all forces in the colony, with 300 pounds 
compensation for his personal losses and his 
conduct in the Braddock campaign. His 
70 



familiar letters at this time speak of severe Seven 

illness, impaired constitution, and damaged ^^\°J 

^ ^ Washington 

private fortune. "I have been upon the 
losing order . . . for near two years,'' he 
gloomily remarks. But there is evidence, in 
a letter written to him from the Fairfax house, 
of some alleviations : — 

"Dear Sir: After thanking Heaven for 
your safe return I must accuse you of great 
unkindness in refusing us the pleasure of 
seeing you this night. ... If you will not 
come to us to-morrow morning very early we 
shall be at Mount Vernon. 

"Sallie Fairfax. 
"Ann Spearing 
"Eliz'th. Dent." 



Here was another sort of harvest from the 
French and Indian wars : four bullets 
through his coat, and two horses shot under 
him, atoned for bashfulness somewhat — 

71 



Seven perhaps had soThewhat cured bashfulness, 

r£^^7 and so chanp;ed his aspect to the female eye, 

Washington & r / ' 

that if they could not quite marry him, they 
almost would. / 

Alleviations did not prevent him from 
promptly starting reform in the militia laws 
to insure more strict instruction; the French 
and Indian War still framed the colonies in 
from North to South with a band of fire 
and death, and presently the young com- 
mander of Virginia's forces is riding forth 
upon a military mission to Boston, with many 
alleviations by the way, as his list of expenses 
discloses : " For treating ladies to Micro- 
cosm 1.8; loss at cards 8.; for a Hatt . . . 
for silver lace . . . for 2 pr. of Gloves . . . 
for Cockades . . . for Breeches buckle" 
etc., — here are the relaxations of the stately 
but convivial young dandy, as he passes 
through Philadelphia and New York on his 
journey. There are no bullet-holes in those 
coats; but an arrow from Cupid seems again 

72 



to have made a rent in one of them while Seven 

he was in New York. rrf\ 

yVasntngton 

It was, however, still a young bachelor 
who went from these agreeable distractions 
back into the bloody Indian wars, where his 
manly heart was soon moved to its depths by 
pity. He writes Dinwiddie : " I am too little 
acquainted, Sir, with pathetic language, to 
attempt a description of the people's dis- 
tresses . . . but ... I would be a willing 
offering to savage fury, and die by inches to 
save a people.'' He continued to taste the 
superciliousness of "Regular" toward "Pro- 
vincial" officers (England's dense arrogance 
was laying up for her a cumulative retribution 
in the colonial heart), and for the first time 
he came in for the public servant's inevitable 
portion of newspaper abuse. This mongrel, 
heel-snapping breed of injustice nearly cost 
the colony his services; he declared that 
nothing but the danger of the times pre- 
vented his instant resignation. While re- 

73 



Seven cruiting, he ha^hten perforce summary both 

•^^■^/•^ as to man and horses, and the drunkenness 

Washington 

of his soldiers at Winchester had driven him 
to speak excellent but incautious words of 
"Tippling House-keepers/* This brought a 
violent unpopularity dow^n upon him; it is 
at this day most comical to read that they 
threatened to blow out his brains ! Many 
incidents at this time show that high temper 
of his to have been shrewdly tried, and to 
have flashed out now and then, — as, for 
instance, in these angry sentences : — 

"Your favor . . . came to hand. ... In 
answer to that part, which relates to Colonel 
Corbin's gross and infamous reflection on 
my conduct last Spring, it will be needless, I 
dare say, to observe further at this time, 
than that the liberty, which he has been 
pleased to allow himself in sporting with my 
character, is little else than a comic enter- 
tainment, discovering at once ... his in- 
violable love of truth, his unfathomable 

74 



knowledge, and the masterly strokes of his Seven 

wisdom in displaying it/* rrf\ 

^ J ^ Washington 

At this time tired with campaigning, he 
was evidently made ill by worry over Gover- 
nor Dinwiddie's treacherous hostility toward 
him; he was obliged to leave his post and 
go to Mount Vernon to recover his strength. 
But political treachery and hostility were 
again excellent things to become inured to, 
else later, when our country's life depended 
on him alone, they might have proved too 
much for his unschooled endurance; nor 
should there go unmentioned, among the 
various branches of his education during 
these years of apprenticeship, a control of 
temper that would have been less perfect 
had it been more complete; there are times 
when it is best a man should let loose his 
rage. 

It was nearly six months before his health 
allowed him to resume his duties at Rich- 
mond, at which time we find another lady in 

75 



Seven the case, andsHe seems to have listened to 

rrf\ him more seriously than did her several 

Washington 

predecessors. Was it fame ? or had he 
learned the art better ? or was it that an ill- 
used, invalid young Washington w^as more 
than the female heart could v^^ithstand ? 
No vsrritten documents guide us among these 
surmises. Besides love-making, he v^as busy 
again with soldiers, and had a troop dressed 
in Indian hunting garb, remarking that 
"convenience rather than show . . . should 
be consulted." In the Revolution, he rec- 
ommended this dress again, for the sake of 
its lightness and general practicability, with 
some characteristic words on the value of 
form in military dress, but the greater im- 
portance of utility. 

At last Fort Duquesne fell (it became Fort 
Pitt, and then Pittsburg) and the long tale 
of helpless citizens, ill-fed troops, and political 
incompetence came to an end. The bitter 
it held for Washington was surely surpassed 

76 



by the sweet: esteem and recognition from Seven 
thousands everywhere, far beyond Virginia's Jf\ 
boundaries, crowned by that final, that per- 
fect, that unique tribute from the Speaker 
of the House of Burgesses, upon his installa- 
tion as a member of that body. He had 
met one sweeping defeat at the polls, when 
the "Tippling House-keepers" had taken 
their revenge on him; but now this had been 
reversed by an equally sweeping victory. 
It was in Williamsburg, in May, 1759, when 
Washington was twenty-seven years old, and 
commander-in-chief of all Virginia; when 
his first war was over, when Montcalm and 
Wolfe had fallen. In the House of Burgesses, 
Mr. Robinson, the speaker, had greeted the 
young member with such praise and welcome 
in Virginia's name, that Washington was 
overcome. He rose, attempted to reply, 
blushed, and speech failed him. "Sit down, 
Mr. Washington," said the speaker, "your 
modesty is equal to your valor, and that 
77 



Seven surpasses the power of any language that I 

Ages of „ 

* '' possess. 



Washington 



The mind, full of all that has happened to 
us since that May morning when the young 
Father of his Country stood in the House of 
Burgesses at Williamsburg, cannot dwell 
upon the scene without the heart being 
affected; Speaker Robinson spoke true. 
Does history contain, anywhere, a wreath of 
words more beautiful, which time has only 
set more surely upon its wearer's head \ 
We leave him standing among the Burgesses, 
tall with his six-foot three, strong and straight 
from his campaigns, grown comely and 
commanding, slender but large-made, a 
beautiful serene width between his eyes, 
blushing and trembling because they had 
praised him to his face. 



78 



IV. THE MARRIED MAN 





From 



Martha Washington. 
painting by Gilbert Stuart. 



IV 

" Mount Vernon, 20 September, 1759. Seven 

"... The Scale of Fortune in Amer- ^S^s of 

Washington 
ica is turned greatly in our favor, and success 

is become the boon Companion of your 
Fortunate Generals. ... I am now, I 
believe, fixed at this seat with an agreeable 
Consort for Life. And hope to find more 
happiness in retirement than I ever experi- 
enced amidst a wide and bustling world." 

The invalid had prevailed in his courting; 
he had been married on the 6th of the pre- 
ceding January to Martha Custis, widow of 
David Parke Custis, and daughter of John 
Dandridge. She brought to him and Mount 
Vernon a considerable fortune, and she made 
later a gracious and dignified figure as the 
President's wife. Few of her words or acts 
81 



Seven are recorded, but her discretion has come 

rrr\ dowRtous. I H the Hiind's evc of the NatioH 

yvasntngton 

she sits forever, serene and kindly in her 
white cap and kerchief, our country's first 
hostess. The gentle haze of legend benefi- 
cently keeps her, as she should be, a living 
but quiet spirit, watching from the soft 
twilight of her privacy the destinies of the 
Republic she played her part in founding. 

It is no great strain of metaphor to say that 
Washington had now his first chance to sit 
down since the days when he had pored over 
his school copy-book; in very truth it made 
a sort of pause, a breath-taking, between the 
backwoods and the Revolution, and he loved 
it best of all. That phrase about his hoping 
to find more happiness in retirement than in 
a wide and bustling world was not an elegant 
moral sentiment written because it was then 
the heyday of elegant moral sentiments in 
epistolary prose. His letters certainly show 
this prevailing fashion of the time, but far 
82 



less than those of Jefferson, for example, — Seven 

less than almost any one's, — their sentences Jf\°-. 

■^ iVasnington 

generally bearing very directly on some point 
of vital public or private necessity. He loved 
Mount Vernon ; to be there with his garden, 
and his crops, and his animals, v^as his deep- 
est heart's desire, and we do not need his 
word for it. Were his writings not full of 
the conscious and unconscious delight in it, 
and yearning for it, his conduct would be 
enough ; whenever he can, he is always going 
back there, and when public service prevents, 
sighs often escape him in familiar letters — 
letters that he signs "With affectionate re- 
gard, I am always yours*' instead of "I 
am &;c.," or "I am, dear Sir, your most 
obedient &c.," or any of those reticent 
formulas he more commonly uses. It would 
not be ill (in a more elaborate account of him) 
to present in gradation the various manners 
in which he would close a letter; they reveal 
much of him and of the situation, from the 

83 



Seven "I am &c./' up to the rare "Yours affection- 



Ages of 
Washington 



ately/' passing on the way such occasions as 
when an unknown lady has sent him a poem, 
or when the poHtical matter is very deUcate, 
and the person a foreigner of distinction, 
when he will say: "It affords an occasion 
also of assuring you, that, with sentiments 
of the highest esteem and greatest respect, 
I have the honor to be, &c." 

For a while it was now his lot to be gen- 
erally at Mount Vernon instead of hurrying 
somewhere on a horse with ragged soldiers 
behind him; this domestic and pastoral 
pause of about six years makes the longest 
parenthesis in the rush of his public existence 
that he ever knew. Its quiet was the quiet 
of deep growth in character. We have seen 
that he entered it a large man; he came out 
of it a great man, ready for what awaited him. 
The process is to us invisible; he never set 
down his meditations, and the hairbreadth 
steps of increase elude the eye as Spring does 

84 



in turning to Summer; but evidently he pon- Seven 

dered, reached conclusions, ripened much, was ^^^^ °^ 

Washington 
but little aware of it, and set no value upon 

it at all as a matter of any possible interest 
to others. And certainly he would have re- 
sented inquiries of a personal sort as unwar- 
rantable invasions of his privacy. Once in 
later life, his silence when some of the clergy 
endeavored to force him to declare his reli- 
gious views, very plainly told them that he 
considered their attempt a piece of imperti- 
nence. It is singular that he should have 
been made out a devout churchman by some, 
and an atheist by others, when his own acts 
and writings perfectly indicate what he was. 
He gave up taking the Communion in middle 
life; he attended church regularly as Presi- 
dent, and not at all so when living at Mount 
Vernon; in dying, he said nothing about re- 
ligion. His nature was deeply reverent, and 
his letters so abound in evidences of this that 
choosing among them is hard : — 

85 



Seven (^77^) "Th^^and of Providence has been 

J/\ so conspicuous in all this, that he must be 

yrashington * 

worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and 
more than wicked, that has not gratitude 
enough to acknowledge his obligations." 

(1791) "The great Ruler of events will 
not permit the happiness of so many millions 
to be destroyed." 

(1792) "But as the All-wise Disposer of 
events has hitherto watched over my steps, 
I trust, that, in the important one I may be 
soon called upon to take, he will mark the 
course so plainly as that I cannot mistake the 
way." 

(1794) "At disappointments and losses 
which are the effects of providential acts, 
I never repine, because I am sure the alwise 
disposer of events knows better than we do, 
what is best for us, or what we deserve." 

These sentences are intentionally not taken 
from public papers, or formal letters, where 
convention might be the reason for their 
86 



existence, but from letters to friends where Seven 

nothing of the sort was demanded; they ^^^^ ^^ 

Washing 

are therefore spontaneous expressions, as is 
this final one, written at a time of great stress : 
(1798) "While I, believing that man was 
not designed by the all-wise Creator to live 
for himself alone, prepare for the worst that 
can happen." These words probably state 
Washington's creed as nearly and fully as 
it could be expressed; certainly his deeds 
square with them fully. Do we count among 
our public men any who lived less for himself 
alone t 

But in these six years of quiet that he now 
entered upon at Mount Vernon he was able 
to follow his inclinations, his private taste, to 
live for himself while the calm between the 
end of the French and Indian War and the 
beginning of the Revolution lasted. He 
must have enjoyed the absence of some 
things quite as much as the presence of others 
— he must, for instance, have basked in the 
87 



Seven cessation or^Mjlic criticism. It would be 

^^\°-^ a great blunder to think of him as a man 
Washington ^ 

without nerves; he was exceedingly sensitive. 
This quality, perhaps, does not seem to fit 
with what he was else : a man of far larger 
frame than common — his measure after 
death being six feet three and a half inches — 
with life-long sporting and outdoor tastes, 
with a brain that worked by slow firm steps 
to secure conclusions; a man of moderation 
in food and drink, though a lover of con- 
viviality, a natural leader, with almost in- 
destructible endurance of body, and com- 
pletely indestructible endurance of spirit. 
This is a character we should imagine imper- 
vious to carp and cavil, being made of such 
stern stuff; but it will not do to trust imagi- 
nation in these matters. It was in their fool- 
ish attempt to make of Washington what they 
imagined he ought to be — edifyingly super- 
human — that his early biographers missed 
making him alive. The man himself, as he 
88 



has written himself unwittingly down for Seven 

ever in his letters and diaries — chokeful Jf\^-^ 

Washington 

of vigor, nobility, kindness, public spirit, 
now breaking out in a fury at some news- 
paper attack, and now indulging in sedate 
fun (somewhat broad at times) — such a 
man is far more edifying than any concocted 
figurehead of monotonously calm superiority. 
It has already been said that Washington's 
ill-health at the close of the French and 
Indian wars was more owing to mental 
strain over the bad treatment he received at 
Governor Dinwiddie's hands than to physical 
hardship, and that he entertained thoughts 
of resigning which were expelled only by 
his sense of patriotic responsibility. When 
this was past, he did resign. We have also 
seen his trembling and stammering under 
the embarrassment of praise in public, 
and we shall see later his explosion of rage 
at a political cartoon shown him during a 
cabinet meeting. During the Revolution, 

89 



Seven he had a tifF^iiiJi Hamilton, and Hamilton 

Trr\ went off in a hufF; almost at once Washington 

Washington 

sent a message of amend to his fiery young 
subordinate. It was a plain case of impatience 
on the General's part, and is another instance 
of his nerves. Jefferson wrote that he was the 
most sensitive man to criticism that he knew. 
But better than other men's opinions as to 
this is what he writes himself. On receiving 
in December 1795, from the General Assem- 
bly of Maryland, a declaration of loyalty and 
reliance, he responded to the governor : — 

"At any time the expression of such a 
sentiment would have been considered as 
highly honorable and flattering. At the 
present, when the voice of malignancy is so 
high-toned ... it is peculiarly grateful to 
my sensibility.'' 

Still more freely does he unveil his heart 
to a nearer friend in 1796, and this passage 
is worth a dozen opinions : — 

"Having from a variety of reasons (among 
90 



which a disincHnation to be longer buffeted Seven 

in the public prints by a set of infamous ^f^"-^ 

^ ^ J Washington 

scribblers) taken my ultimate determination 
*to seek the post of honor in a private station,' 
I regret exceedingly I did not publish my 
valedictory address the day after the ad- 
journment of Congress. ... It might have 
prevented the remarks which, more than 
probable, will follow a late annunciation — 
namely, that I delayed it long enough to see 
that the current was turned against me, 
before I declared my intention to decline." 
We find him, then, at sixty-seven, shrink- 
ing from the "infamous scribblers" just as 
he had done at twenty-seven — sensitive all 
his life long, in spite of honors won, and 
the seasoning of struggle and of age. These 
are the things, these contrasts, these seem- 
ing contradictions in character, that strike 
the flash of life, and let us see across the 
long dark distance the heart of Washington 
beating, and the blood surging to his face. 

91 



Seven It is fabricaf^Tk^nsistency that kills natural- 

Jges of 



Washington 



ness. 

Of his humor, if humor it may be called, 
some instances have been already given. 
But if w^e gather before us all the anecdotes 
of this humor that record has preserved, and 
consider them as a v^hole, they show^ rather 
a robust sense of fun, a wholesome power 
to be amused (and sometimes uproariously 
amused), than any subtle gift and perception. 
That Elizabethan roughness in mirth which 
surges through Shakespeare and which still 
delights the gallery to-day, in the eighteenth 
century still delighted the boxes as well, 
all classes of society taking a pleasure in 
"horse play,'' which a certain portion of our 
community has now outgrown in its decadent 
ascent from vigor to refinement. Washington 
seldom said droll things, but enjoyed very 
heartily the droll things of others. We have 
the story of his laughter when a young horse 
proved too much for a boastful rider; of his 
92 



laughter at something told by a famous army Seven 

raconteur while the two were crossing the ^^^ ^ 

° Washington 

Hudson together; of his laughter at a joke 
made by a visitor which threw the whole 
Mount Vernon family into mirth, which a 
parrot at once imitated, when Washington 
exclaimed: "Ah, you are a funny fellow. 
See, even that bird is laughing at you." 
We have also the account of how he laughed 
at General Putnam (whom he called Old 
Put, being fond of him) on an occasion which 
shall be mentioned later. We have other 
instances, all showing a power to enjoy what 
the Shakesperian audience enjoyed in the 
way of fun ; — in short, Washington's laughter 
may be likened to a big bell that needs a good 
strong hand to make it sound, and then rings 
out far over the open fields. The light, 
quick tinkle of our electric age was not any- 
thing that he knew, and perhaps no story 
about this side of his nature is more vivid 
than one told in a foot note in the life of 

93 



Seven Jeremiah Smitrv twice Chief Justice of New 

^^^ ^^ Hampshire, and a visitor at Mount Vernon 

Washington 

in 1797. 

"Judge Marshall and Judge Washington 
(the General's nephew Bushrod) were on 
their way to Mount Vernon, attended by a 
servant who had the charge of a large port- 
manteau containing their clothes. At their 
last stopping place there happened to be a 
Scotch pedlar, with a pack of goods which 
resembled their portmanteau. The roads 
were very dusty, and a little before reaching 
the general's, they, thinking it hardly re- 
spectful to present themselves as they were, 
stopped in a neighboring wood to change their 
clothes. The colored man got down his 
portmanteau, and just as they had prepared 
themselves for the new garments, out flew 
some fancy soap and various other articles 
belonging to the pedlar, whose goods had 
been brought on instead of their own. They 
were so struck by the consternation of their 

94 



servant, and the ludicrousness of their own Seven 
position, being there naked, that they burst ^^V 
into loud and repeated shouts of laughter. 
Washington, who happened to be out upon 
his grounds near by, heard the noise, and came 
to see what might be the occasion of it, when, 
finding his friends in that strange plight, he 
was so overcome with laughter, that he ac- 
tually rolled upon the ground." 

Here, then, is an aspect of the Father of 
his Country that has been sedulously kept 
from all the generations of those whom the 
priggish, sickening, cherry-tree invention has 
turned away from loving him for being like 
themselves after all, and who have given him, 
instead of their love, only a perfunctory, 
uninterested respect. 

Judge Marshall saw him roll on the ground, 
but Judge Marshall nevertheless told a 
friend within three months of his own death 
that he was "never free from restraint in 
Washington's presence — never felt quite 

95 



Seven 
Jges of 
Washington 



at ease, sucT^^nas Washington's stateliness 
and dignity." 

Dignity and rolling on the ground are not 
incompatible; Washington's character is one 
of those rare ones which not only can bear the 
whole truth, but which gains by the whole 
truth. Another passage from Jeremiah 
Smith's life will give, as well and as simply 
as any of the contemporary memories, a 
glimpse of Washington the man, the host in 
his own house. The visitor arrived late in 
the afternoon — 

"... And received a most cordial wel- 
come from Washington and his lady, the 
latter *at this time a squat figure, without 
any pretension to beauty, but a good motherly 
sort of woman.' After a cup of excellent 
tea &c., the evening passed in conversation. 
There were present, besides the family, a 
son of Lafayette, and another French gentle- 
man. While they were talking, a servant 
came into the room and said to Washington, 

96 



'John would like the newspaper, sir.' He Seven 

replied, 'You may take it,' but after he had Jf\ 

* Washington 

gone out, said, 'he had better mind his work.' 
He then told Mr. Smith a story of his coach- 
man, a long-tried and faithful man. One 
very rainy day he was obliged to order his 
carriage unexpectedly, to go a long distance 
on business. After getting into it he per- 
ceived that there was some delay about start- 
ing, and putting his head out, he saw that 
there was a great bustle among his servants, 
who were trying to mount the coachman on 
the box, and with much difficulty, at length 
succeeded. 'What is the matter.?' asked the 
general. The servants replied, that he was 
intoxicated; 'whereupon,' said Washington 
to Mr. Smith, 'I was tempted to say to the 
man at once, be gone about your business.' 
But the coachman at that moment turned 
round and said, 'never fear, massa, I'll drive 
you safe.' 'And I trusted him,' continued 
Washington, ' and he never drove me better.' 

97 



Seven "At aboilHi^Jf past nine, Mr. Smith signi- 

^^\°-^ fied his intention of retiring, when Washins:- 
Washington ^ ^ 

ton also arose, and taking a lamp, led the 
way to a most comfortable apartment, in 
which was a fire brightly blazing. He 
assured his guest that the fire * would be per- 
fectly safe,' and intimated that he might 
*like to keep his lamp burning through the 
night.' In the morning, after breakfast, 
Mr. Smith took leave, though desired to 
prolong his visit ; and a very urgent invitation 
was given, that he should * bring his bride to 
see them.' Horses were brought to the door, 
and Washington accompanied him some 
miles on the way. *He was always,' said 
Mr. Smith, 'dignified, and one stood a little 
in awe of him.'" 

**A little in awe;" again that touch, given 
above by Judge Marshall, and by so many 
others — in fact, unanimously given. That 
Judge Marshall, himself a considerable man, 
should have seen Washington roll on the 

98 



ground with laughter, yet after that still Seven 

never feel quite at ease in his presence is rrr\ 

Washington 

wonderfully significant of the majestic figure 
that Washington must have become after 
bearing our young country on his shoulders 
through so many years of its weakness and 
need. The truth is, a great man cannot do 
great things without in a way growing apart 
from his fellows, little as he may desire such 
a result. For somewhat the same reason the 
sight of a huge flood, or a deep chasm, or a 
high mountain, inclines all save stunted 
spirits to silence, and personal greatness dis- 
tils inevitable constraint, and draws around 
itself unknowingly a circle of isolation 
that is not without its sadness. In Wash- 
ington's very last years, we read that during 
a dance of young people at Mount Vernon, 
he came out of his study to take pleasure in 
looking on, when a quiet spread over the 
gayety of the party. It was explained that 
his presence caused it, and then they saw 

99 



Seven that tall, weatfi^r-beaten figure go back to 

•^^^/-^ his solitude from the lights and the laughter 

Washington ^ ^ 

whose brightness he was unwilling to dim. 

To the little glimpse of Mount Vernon pri- 
vacy given by Jeremiah Smith — the servant 
asking for the newspaper, the tale of the 
coachman, the host lighting his guest to the 
room with the brightly burning fire — this 
further picture is worth selecting from the 
many that have survived. A visitor, who 
was afflicted with a heavy cold, lay coughing 
in his bed, unable to sleep, when he be^ 
came aware of the looming, night-clad form 
of Washington approaching his bed-side. 
Washington was bringing him a bowl of tea 
which he had got out of his bed to make 
himself for his guest's relief. 

It is likely that Washington's familiar 
talk with his friends (in those rare moments 
when they were not all obliged to be debating 
the gravest possible matters) was not infre- 
quently relieved by touches of that sedately 
lOO 




^ S 

Z en 

> ^ 

h O 

J « 



expressed fun which occur now and then in Seven 

his letters, such as the passage about General ^f^\ ^^ 

' ^ ^ Wasntngton 

Braddock and the potted woodcocks. In- 
deed, we know that he could be jocular in the 
very heart of a crisis. On that memorable 
night of Trenton, in the midst of the icy, 
dangerous Delaware, he turned to Henry 
Knox with a rough joke that still lives upon 
the lips of men. But to men's lips it must be 
confined; a printed page is not the place for 
it, any more than a china-shop is the place for 
a bull, who is an object as excellent in the 
fields as Washington's speech was excellent 
on the Delaware, in the presence only of 
Knox and the boatman. His enjoyment of 
hunt-dinners, and of those songs and jests 
which come after them, is well known, and 
his fondness for theatrical shows, and shows 
in general, was life-long, as was his pleasure 
in dancing. He danced during war, as well 
as in peace, and up to within three years of 
his death — that is to say, when he was 

lOI 



Seven sixty-four year^old. Perhaps none of his 

Jf\ letters better shows the changine from 

Washington ^ ^ 

seriousness to amusement,, and back again, 
than the following to Lafayette : — 



"Mount Vernon, io May, 1786. 

"My dear Marquis, 

"... It is one of the evils of demo- 
cratical governments, that the people, not 
always seeing and frequently misled, must 
often feel before they can act right; but 
then evils of this nature seldom fail to work 
their own cure. It is to be lamented, never- 
theless, that the remedies are so slow, and 
that those who may wish to apply them sea- 
sonably are not attended to before they 
suffer in person, in interest, and in reputation. 
The discerning part of the community have 
long seen the necessity of giving adequate 
powers to Congress for national purposes, 
and the ignorant and designing must yield 
102 



to it ere long. . . . The British still occupy Seven 

our posts to the westward. ... It is indeed ^'^^ ^-^ 

Washington 

evident to me that they had it in contemplation 
to do this at the time of the treaty. The 
expression . . . which respects the evacuation 
... is strongly marked with deception. I 
have not the smallest doubt, but that every 
secret engine is continually at work to in- 
flame the Indian mind, with a view to keep it 
at variance with these States for the purpose 
of retarding our settlements to the west- 
ward, and depriving us of the fur and peltry 
trade of that country. 

**Your assurances, my dear Marquis, re- 
specting the male and female asses, are highly 
pleasing to me, I shall look for them with 
much expectation. . . . 

"The Jack which I have already received 
from Spain, in appearance is fine; but his 
late royal master, tho' past his grand climac- 
teric, cannot be less moved by female allure- 
ments than he is; or when prompted can 
103 



Seven proceed witl^l^re deliberation and majestic 

,£ , , solemnity to the work of procreation. . . . 

iVasntngton •' ^ 

"... Your late purchase of an estate 
in the colony of Cayenne, with a view of 
emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous 
and noble proof of your humanity. Would 
to God a like spirit would diffuse itself 
generally Into the minds of the people of this 
country. But I despair of seeing It. Some 
petitions were presented to the Assembly, 
at Its last session, for the abolition of slavery, 
but they could scarcely obtain a reading. To 
set them afloat at once would, I really be- 
lieve, be productive of much inconvenience 
and mischief; but by degrees it certainly 
might, and assuredly ought to be effected; 
and that too by legislative authority." 

The jack received from Spain was named 
Royal Gift in honor of the King's courtesy 
and compliment to Washington in waiving 
the law against sending any of that particular 
breed out of the country, and the animal was 
104 



the occasion of several other passages in Seven 

Washington's letters, similar in spirit to that ^^^^ °^ 

Washington 
in which he wrote Lafayette. 

The breeding of animals was something 
to which he much attended, he led all his 
neighbor planters in discovering that there 
could be no profit in tobacco, while in foreign 
ports any flour bearing the brand "George 
Washington, Mount Vernon," was passed 
without further inspection, because his honest 
goods had carried their reputation even over 
the seas. 

With his small book learning, his general 
leaning to sport and the open air, and his 
uncertain spelling (even in the letter about his 
marriage, a part of which begins this chapter, 
he speaks of London as the great Matrapolis) 
we meet another flash of contradiction in the 
discovery that he decidedly liked to write. 
He plainly relished filling pages with his 
sentiments and opinions, and that beautiful 
manuscript of his must have been a quick 
105 



Seven operation, whicT^k certainly does not seem 

^^\°^ in appearance. Yet this, with his well-nigh 

Washington ^^ ^ 

miraculous energy, is the only explanation 
of how a man, so occupied in action as he 
was, managed to pen literally thousands of 
pages with his own hand. There can be no 
doubt, when we turn over the fourteen 
volumes of his published writings, each of 
four hundred fifty pages, and by no means 
including the entire product of his pen 
(they omit seven hundred and one letters 
and addresses published elsewhere), that 
quite aside from letters of obligation, George 
Washington enjoyed sitting down to paper, 
quill, and ink, and that when he once got 
under way, he was quite likely to fill the 
sheet. Sitting down to other things was less 
apt to be so welcome, — sitting for his 
portrait, for instance, of which he writes : — 
"At first I was ... as restive under the 
operation, as a colt Is of the saddle. The 
next time I submitted very reluctantly, but 
1 06 



with less flouncing. Now, no drayhorse Seven 

moves more readily to his thills than I to A^\ 

■' Washington 

the painter's chair." 

In this diverting account of his own 
progress toward resignation, we may read 
either his recognition that as a public man he 
must submit, or else that he came to enjoy 
it. However this may be, his sundry con- 
tacts with artists — painters, sculptors, and 
architects when it came to planning the 
Federal City (as it was called before his name 
was given to it) — led him to form an opinion 
of the "irritable race" which he expressed 
with the same happy unmistakableness that 
^characterizes all his opinions : — 

" It is much to be regretted, however com- 
mon the case is, that men, who possess 
talents which fit them for peculiar purposes, 
should almost invariably be under the in- 
fluence of an untoward disposition, or are 
sottish, idle, or possessed of some other 
disqualification, by which they plague all 
107 



Seven those with wno!n they are concerned. But 

g^^ V J ^[^ pjQ|. expect to have met with such per- 

Washington ^ 

verseness in Major L'Enfant. ..." And 
writing two years after this about another 
architect, his mind peeps forth again: "Some 
difficulty arises with respect to Mr. Hallet 
... his feehngs should be saved and soothed 
as much as possible." 

No one seems ever to have written letters 
more natural, more redolent of their writer, 
than Washington; those of many other emi- 
nent men — Jefferson, for example — often 
subtly betray a sense of being composed; but 
to read the correspondence of the master of 
Mount Vernon is gradually to feel one's self 
in his presence, almost as if the man were 
sitting there, and this quality is, if possible, 
more striking still in his domestic journal, 
from which we give a few foreshortened 
strokes, in order to paint Mount Vernon life 
in his own words, written during the early 
years of his marriage. 

1 08 



"Several of the family were taken with the Seven 

measels .... Hauled the Sein and p;ot some ^^^ ^ 

Washington 

fish, but was near being disappointed of my 
Boat by means of an oyster man who had 
lain at my Landing and plagued me a good 
deal by his disorderly behavior .... Mrs. 
Washington was a good deal better to-day 
but the oyster man still continuing his Dis- 
orderly behavior at my landing, I was obliged 
in the most preemptory manner to order him 
and his company away. . . . 

"Went to Alexandria and saw my Tobo 
... in very bad order . . . visited my Planta- 
tion. Severely reprimanded young Stephens 
for his insolence. . . . After Breakfast . . . 
rid out to my Plantns . . . found Stephens 
hard at work with an ax — very extraordinary 
this ! . . . White Frost . . . two negroes 
sick . . . ordered them to be blooded . . . 
Stephens at Winchester. Visited my Planta- 
tion and found to my great surprise Stephens 
constantly at work . . . passing by my Car- 
109 



Seven penters . . .^^ found . . . George, Tom, 

^i^^ of Mike and young Billy, had only hugh'd 

Washington / 5 /» ^6 

120 foot yesterday from lo o'clock. Sat 
down therefore, and observed — 

"Tom and Mike in a less space than 30 
minutes, cleared the bushes . . . visited my 
plantations before sunrise, and forbid Ste- 
phens keeping any horses upon my expense." 
Stephens, by this time, had probably learned 
to quake in his shoes. "Went to a ball at 
Alexandria, where Musick and dancing was 
the chief entertainment . . . great plenty 
of bread and butter, some biscuits with tea 
and coffee, which the drinkers of could not 
distinguish from hot water sweetened ... I 
shall therefore distinguish this ball by the stile 
and title of the Bread and Butter Ball, . . . 

"After several efforts to make a plow . . . 
was feign to give it up. . . . Mrs. Posy and 
some young woman, whose name was un- 
known to anybody in this family, din'd here. 
. . . Spent the greatest part of the day in 
no 



making a new plow of my own invention. . . . Seven 

Sat my plow to work and found she answered ,£^\ 

•' * Washington 

very well. ... A messenger came to inform 
me that my Mill was in great danger . . . 
got there myself just time enough to give her 
a reprieve . . . by wheeling dirt into the place 
which the water had work'd." 

He took off his coat in this emergency, 
and labored with his men, and he probably 
did so on many another occasion. Such a 
way of not merely owning, but mastering, 
his property, brought him to a most thorough 
and sagacious knowledge of the soil. It 
were easy to overload our narrative with 
extracts from the copious pages of his agricul- 
tural and domestic notes, and this must not be 
done; but to omit these altogether would 
cause the reader to miss a direct sight of 
Washington the farmer and of his astound- 
ing power of detail. 

"Harrowed the ground at Muddy Hole, 
which had been twice ploughed, for Albany 
III 



Seven pease in broS^^nast. At Dogue Run began 

^^^ ^ to sow the remainder of the Siberian wheat 



Washington 



. . . ordered a piece of ground, two acres, 
to be ploughed at the Ferry ... to be drilled 
with corn and potatoes between, each ten 
feet apart, row from row of the same kind. 
Sowed in the Neck . . . next to the eleven 
rows of millet, thirty-five rows of the rib- 
grass seeds, three feet apart and one foot 
asunder in the rows." (This was the 14th 
of April, 1792.) 

^' Corn. On rows 10 feet one way, and 
18 inches thick single stalks; will yield 
as much to the Acre in equal ground, as 
at 5 feet each way with two stalks in a 
hill; to that Potatoes, Carrots, & Pease 
between the drilled Corn, if not exhaustive, 
which they are declared not to be, are nearly 
a clear profit. . . . Let the hands at the 
Mansion House grub well, and perfectly 
prepare the old clover lot. . . . When I say 
grub well, I mean that everything, which is 
112 



of 
Washington 



not to remain as trees, should be taken up by Seven 
the roots . . . for I seriously assure you, that 
I had rather have one acre cleared in this 
manner, than four in the common mode . . . 
It is a great and very disagreeable eye-sore to 
me, as well as a real injury in the loss of labor 
and the crop (ultimately), and the destruction 
of scythes, to have foul meadow^s. . . . 

"You vs^ill be particularly attentive to my 
negros in their sickness; and to order every 
overseer positively to be so likev^ise; for I 
am sorry to observe that the generality of 
them viev^ these poor creatures in scarcely any 
other light than they do a draught horse or 
ox . . . instead of comforting and nursing 
them v^hen they lye on a sick bed. . . . 

"Doll at the Ferry must be taught to knit, 
and made to do a sufficient day's v^ork of it. 
. . . Lame Peter, if no body else will, must 
teach her. . . . Tell house Frank I expect 
he will lay up a more plenteous store of the 
black common walnut. . . . 



Seven "The deC^i^jn with respect to the pota- 

4^^-f ^/ toes (210 instead of 418 bushels) is of a piece 
Washington ^ -^ J \r 

with other practices of a similar kind ... for 
to be plain, Alexandria is such a recepticle for 
everything that can be filched from the right 
owners by either blacks or whites. . . . 
Workmen in most countries, I believe, are 
necessary plagues ; — in this, where entreaties 
as well as money must be used to obtain their 
work, and keep them to their duty, they 
baffle all calculation. ... If lambs of any 
kind have been sold ... it has not only 
been done without my consent, but expressly 
contrary to my orders. And sure I am, the 
money for which they were sold never found 
its way into my pockets. . . . And I wish 
you would reprehend the overseers severely 
for suffering the sheep under their respective 
care to get so foul as I saw some when I 
was at home. ... It is impossible for a 
sheep to be in a thriving condition when he 
is carrying six or eight pounds at his tale. — 
114 



And how a man who has them entrusted to Seven 

his care, and must have a sight of this sort ^^^ ^-^ 

Washington 

every day before his eyes can avoid being 
struck with the propriety and necessity of 
easing them of this load, is what I have often 
wondered at. . . . 

'*It is to be observed, by the weekly re- 
ports, that the sewers make only six shirts 
a week, and the last week Carolina (without 
being sick) made only five. Mrs. Washington 
says their usual task was to make nine with 
shoulder straps and good sewing. . . . 

"Desire Thomas Green to date his re- 
ports. ... I fancy it will puzzle him to 
make out 508 feet in the twenty four 
plank there set down. . . . How does 
your growing wheat look at this time } 
I hope no appearance of the Hessian fly 
is among it. . . . In clearing the wood, 
mark a road by an easy and graduated 
ascent from the marsh ... up the hollow 
which leads into the lot beyond the fallen 

115 



Washington 



Seven chestnut . .^^»od leave the trees standing 

,f/^, thick on both sides of it ... if too thicL 

they can always be thinned; but, if too 
thin, there is no remedy but time to retrieve 
the error. . . . 

"Spring Barley . . . has thriven no better 
with me than Vetches. . . . Of the fie) \ 
Peas of England I have more than once 
tried, but not with encouragement to proceed. 
. . . The practice of plowing in Buck- 
wheat twice in a season, as a fertilizer, is 
not new to me. . . . The cassia charmoe- 
crista, or Eastern shore Bean . . . has ob- 
tained a higher reputation than it deserves. 
... I am not surprized that our mode of 
fencing should be disgusting to a European 
eye ... no sort of fencing is more expen- 
sive or wasteful of timber. . . . 

"I find by the reports that Sam is, in a 
manner, always returned sick; Doll at the 
Ferry, and several of the spinners very fre- 
quently so, for a week at a stretch; and 
ii6 



ditcher Charles often laid up with a lame- Seven 

ness. I never wish my people to work when ^^^ °-^ 

Washingto?! 

they are really sick . . . but if you do not 
examine into their complaints, they will 
lay by when no more ails them than all 
those who stick to their business. . . . My 
people . . . will lay up a month, at the end 
of which no visible change in their counte- 
nance, nor the loss of an oz. of flesh is 
discoverable; and their allowance of pro- 
vision is going on as if nothing ailed them. 
. . . What sort of lameness is Dick's . . . 
and what kind of sickness is Betty Davis's 
. . . a more lazy, deceitful and impudent 
huzzy is not to be found in the United States. 
... I am as unwilling to have any person, 
in my service, forced to work when they are 
unable, as I am to have them skulk from it, ** 
when they are fit for it. . . . Davy's lost 
lambs carry with them a very suspicious 
appearance. ... If some of the nights in 
which . . . overseers are frolicking . . . 

117 



Seven 
Ages of 
Washington 



were spent nTNu^tching the barns, visiting 
the negro quarters at unexpected hours, way- 
laying the roads, or contriving some device 
by which the receivers of stolen goods might 
be entrapped ... it would redound much 
more to their own credit . . . than running 
about. ... I . o . give it as a positive 
order, that after saying what dog or dogs 
shall remain, if any negro presumes under 
any pretence whatsoever to preserve, or 
bring one into the family, that he shall be 
severely punished, and the dog hanged. I 
was obliged to adopt this practice whilst 
I resided at home ... for the preservation 
of my sheep and hogs; but I observed when 
I was at home last, that a new set of dogs 
was rearing up, and I intended to have spoke 
about them. ... It is not for any good 
purpose negros raise or keep dogs, but to 
aid them in their night robberies; for it is 
astonishing to see the command under which 
their dogs are. . . . The practice of run- 
ii8 



ning to stores &c. for everything that is Seven 

wanting-, or thought to be wanting . . . has Jf\ 

^ ^ ^ Washington 

proved the destruction of many a man. . . . 
I well know that things must be bought . . . 
but I know also that expedients may be hit 
upon, and things (though perhaps not quite 
so handsome) done within ourselves, that 
would ease the expenses of my estate very 
considerably." 

These quotations, it will be understood, 
come from no one passage, but are taken 
from many, written at widely different dates, 
sometimes in the form of notes, and some- 
times addressed to those in charge of Mount 
Vernon when its master was obliged to be 
away attending to the Revolution, or the 
Constitutional Convention, or the duties of 
President. What is here given is perhaps a 
thousandth part of the whole, and as we dis- 
cern Doll at the Ferry and ditcher Charles, 
and the superfluous dogs, sitting in the back 
paths and crossroads of Washington's im- 
119 



Seven mortality, w^iee himself, in neither mili- 

S^\ tary nor state dress, but easy in his home 

Washington ^ ^ 

riding clothes, passing over his fields at sun- 
rise, watching the Siberian wheat, pointing 
where a new road should go, where a new tree 
should rise, and happier in those pastoral 
hours than his more glorious moments ever 
beheld him. Upon this side of his life and 
character we cannot dwell again, save now 
and then to remind the reader that it lay 
always in the depths of his heart, no matter 
what else that "spark of celestial fire called 
conscience" might be driving him to do in 
the service of his country; we finish our 
detailed reference to it, with what he wrote 
Hamilton at the time he was considering his 
last speech to Congress. 

"It must be obvious to every man, who 
considers the agriculture of this country, 
(even in the best improved parts of it) and 
compares the produce of our lands with those 
of other countries, no ways superior to them 

120 



in natural fertility, how miserably defective Seven 

we are in the management of them ; and that ^^^ ^-^ 

Washington 

if we do not fall on a better mode of treating 
them, how ruinous it will prove to the landed 
interest. Ages will not produce a systematic 
change without public attention and encour- 
agement; but a few years more of increased 
sterility will drive the Inhabitants of the 
Atlantic states westwardly for support; 
whereas if they were taught how to improve 
the old, instead of going in pursuit of new 
and productive soils, they would make those 
acres which now scarcely yield them any- 
thing, turn out beneficial to themselves — 
to the Mechanics by supplying them with 
the staff of life on much cheaper terms — 
to the Merchants, by increasing their Com- 
merce and exportation — and to the Com- 
munity generally, by the influx of Wealth 
resulting therefrom. In a word, it is in my 
estimation, a great national object, and if 
stated as fully as the occasion and circum- 
121 



Seven Stances will a^tttit, I think it must appear 

^ges of ^^„ 

Washington 

At his death in 1 799, plans of crops were 
found written out for 1800, 1801, 1802, and 
1803. 

His marriage brought him no children, 
save those of other people — two step- 
children, and a succession of nephews, nieces, 
grand-nephews, and grand nieces, these latter 
littering his domestic Hfe with the respon- 
sibilities which their parents had failed to 
meet. Their support and rearing were loaded 
upon him, and strung out over a quarter of 
a century ; some of them lived with him, and 
he was endlessly paying out money for the 
others — for their food, their clothes, their 
education, and sometimes for their debts, 
as he had likewise done on occasion for their 
incompetent fathers. "Dear Sir [he writes 
Samuel Washington, the son of his worthless 
brother Samuel] I perceive by your letter of 
the 7th Instant that you are under the same 
122 



mistake that many others are — in suppos- Seven 

ing that I have money always at command. ^^\°J 
^ / / Washington 

The case is so much the reverse . . . that I 
found it expedient to sell all my lands (near 
5000 acres) in Pennsylvania ... Be assured 
there is no practice more dangerous than 
that of borrov^ing money (instance as proof 
the case of your father and uncles) . . . 
all that I shall require is, that you w^ill 
return the net-sum v^hen in your power, with- 
out Interest." Many are the letters like this, 
beginning with a lecture and ending with a 
kindness — and many of the loans were still 
unpaid when he died; in his will some are 
expressly released. Nor was it his own 
blood alone; his wife's relations come in 
for his help, and her grandchildren. In 
one case we find, "Mrs. Haney should en- 
deavor to do what she can for herself — this 
is a duty incumbent on every one; but you 
must not let her suffer, as she has thrown 
herself upon me." — What relation Mrs. 
123 



Seven Haney was LotIuti, nobody has been able to 



Ages of 
Washington 



find ! Though the whole of this miscella- 
neous brood of dependents did not turn out as 
worthless as some of them did,* his unceasing 
generosity and watchful care may be said to 
have been really rewarded in the cases only of 
Bush rod Washington, his nephew, and Nelly 
Custis, his wife's grand-daughter.- To her 
he was devoted, as his constant gifts, and his 
letters, show, while of Bushrod he was both 
proud and fond. But he had a niece Har- 
riot, whose name ends by bringing an ex- 
pectant smile to the lips whenever one comes 
to a letter addressed to her or a reference made 
to her. In her way, she evidently annoyed 
her uncle as much as did Doll at the Ferry, or 
the oyster man, and when one finally meets 
a passage alluding to her conduct, which 
"I hear with pleasure has given much satis- 
faction to my sister," the smile becomes 
laughter. When the various boys fallen 
upon his hands begin to go to school and to 
124 



college, the good Washington's letters to Seven 

them abound in affectionate wise counsel as Jf^ 

IVashtngton 

to their work, their play, their dress, their 
company, their habits; twice, first to Bushrod 
and then to George Steptoe Washington (a 
grand-nephew) long afterward, he writes 
that he is no stoic to ask too much of young 
blood. Not the least touching point in the 
many documents which record his relations 
with all these young people is to find in his 
expense accounts: "The Wayworn traveller, 
a song for Miss Custis,'* and for his young 
step-children in his early married life, " lO 
shillings worth of Toys,'' "6 little books for 
children beginning to read," "A box of Gin- 
gerbread Toys & Sugar Images or Comfits." 
A passage at the close of one of his letters, 
written when he was above sixty (with Mrs. 
Washington in good health), gravely speculat- 
ing upon the possibility of his marrying again, 
is in keeping with his habit of weighing all 
contingencies; one of his brothers had five 
125 



of 
Washington 



Seven Wives, he w5^ Mrs. Washington's second 

husband, what if he survived her ? He 
renounces the hope of children, for, he says, 
he would not commit the folly of taking a 
young wife, but a partner suitable to his 
years. The whole paragraph is a very natural 
one, if scarcely romantic, and we may be 
certain it would have been little pleasing to 
Mrs. Washington. It should not be a matter 
of regret to us, but rather one of relief, that 
he was childless. The spectacle of a great 
man's children and grandchildren is so 
seldom edifying, and so often mortifying, 
that on the whole it is better none of his 
direct blood is among us, and that he stands 
alone, with no weeds of posterity clogging 
round his feet. There is but one family in 
all America whose name forms an un- 
broken chain of public service and honor, 
from its progenitor to the present day; in 
this country the abolition of primogeniture 
makes such families well-nigh impossible, 
126 



and with the gain achieved by such abohsh- Seven 

ment goes the loss of hereditary family re- "^^^ ^ 

J" _ / / Washington 

sponsibiHty to the State, — a loss so far not 
balanced by the civic responsibility mani- 
fested by the American citizen as a unit. 
The life and property of the Englishman 
are to-day better protected than the life and 
property of the American, and this is owing, 
in the last analysis, to a better public opinion 
and better legislative efficiency in England. 
Many a "younger son" has gone into politics 
and parliament, and shone there, because of 
this sense of hereditary family duty to the 
State. How many of their American equiv- 
alents are in Congress and the Senate 't 

It has been said — quite falsely — that 
Washington made his wife unhappy. A 
number of these scandals have a clergyman 
for their source; but no more than some 
lawyers can kill our ideal of Justice, are some 
parsons able to disgust us with Religion. 
The various tales have been tracked down 
127 



Seven to the nothrng^they started from, even the 

Jf^ y. apparently soHd one of the Virginia tomb- 

Washington rr / fe 

Stone bearing a name and the words, "The 
natural son of Washington." There is no 
such tombstone, and never was. Most of 
these forgeries originated during the time 
of the Conway cabal, when Lee (of Mon- 
mouth dishonor), and Gates, and others 
put their hands to anything that might hurt 
Washington; but it was themselves that the 
pitch ultimately defiled. Through Wash- 
ington's forty years of married life there was 
constant mutual devotion between his wife and 
himself, reliance upon him from her, and from 
him solicitude for her when the war kept them 
apart, and affection when they were together. 
While Mr. Lear, his last secretary, and Dr. 
Craik, his warm friend and physician, were 
at his death-bed, "fixed in silent grief, 
Mrs. Washington, who was sitting at the foot 
of the bed, asked with a firm and collected 
voice, *Is he gone?'" Mr. Lear could not 
128 



speak but held up his hand as a signal that Seven 

he was. "*'Tis well/ said she in a plain ^^^^^ 

^ yvasnington 

voice. 'AH is now over. I have no more 
trials to pass through. I shall soon follow 
him.'" [This is from Lear's account.] And 
on the next day, "Mrs. Washington desired 
that a door might be made for the Vault, 
instead of having it closed up as formerly, 
after the body should be deposited, observing, 
*That it will soon be necessary to open it 
again.' From that day, she moved from 
their room to a little room above it, which 
had the only window in the house whence 
his grave could be seen. There she lived 
until she followed him." 

Into the quiet of Mount Vernon, some 
six years after Washington's marriage, broke 
the rumors and rumblings that were to end 
in Revolution, and from that time on his 
mind was increasingly aroused. We may 
perhaps set our finger upon the very day that 
saw him waken to resentment against Eng- 
K 129 



Seven land, — home as he called her to the last 

S^ h possible moment, — the 29th of May, 1765, 

when the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg 
was thrown into debate "most bloody'* 
(as Jefferson describes it) by certain seven 
resolutions moved by an uncouth young 
rustic of genius. Patrick Henry had already 
severely disconcerted the established leaders 
of Virginia by his argument in the " Parsons' 
Cause" in December, 1763, when the wrong 
side, through him, had won. But on this 
occasion, by those resolutions about taxation 
offered by this new member, and by his speech 

— "if this be treason, make the most of it" 

— places were changed, and Peyton Ran- 
dolph, Richard Bland, George Wythe, and 
Edmund Pendleton, sorely against their 
judgment and liking at first, followed the lead 
of Patrick Henry into the Revolution. We 
can see the progress of Washington's mind 
through the next ten years in brief fragments 
of his letters — those ten years that saw 

130 



Franklin before Parliament, the Boston Seven 

"massacre" fa large name to have given it), ^^^ ^ 

^ ^ 6 ;> Washington 

the tea tax (after which Washington went 
without all taxed articles), the Burgesses' 
many dissensions with the royal governors, 
the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Port Bill, 
the Continental Congress to which he rode 
as delegate with Pendleton and Henry, and 
at length the outbreak of war : — 

"The Stamp Act . . . engrosses . . . con- 
versation . . . many luxuries . . . can well 
be dispensed with . . . where, then, is the 
utility of these restrictions ? . . . Great Brit- 
ian will be satisfied with nothing less than the 
deprivation of American freedom. . . . Yet 
arms . . . should be the last resource. . . . 
Is it against the duty of three pence per 
pound on tea t . . . No, it is the right only 
. . . Great Britian hath no more right to put 
. . . hands into my pocket . . . than I have 
to put hands into yours. ... I could wish, I 
own, that the dispute had been left to poster- 
131 



Seven ity. . . . fTf^i^n not be arrested . . . more 

„5 , 1^ blood will be spilled . . . than history has 

vVasntngton * -^ 

ever yet furnished instances of in North 
America. ... I am well satisfied that no 
such thing is desired by any thinking man in 
all North America . . . that it is the ardent 
wish . . . that peace . . . upon constitu- 
tional grounds, may be restored. ... I can 
solemnly declare to you, that, for a year or 
two past, there has been scarce a moment, 
that I could properly call my own, that with 
my own business, my present ward's, my 
mother's. Colonel Colville's, Mrs. Sawyer's, 
Colonel Fairfax's, Colonel Monro's, and 
. . . my brother Augustine's concerns . . . 
together with the share I take in public 
affairs ... I have really been deprived of 
every kind of enjoyment." 

At the time he rides to the Continental 

Congress, an account of him is given by a 

fellow Virginian among a number of pithy 

descriptions: Of Randolph, "a venerable 

132 



man ... an honest man ... a true Roman Seven 

spirit;'' of Bland, ^'a wary, old, experienced "^^'' °^ 

Washington 
veteran . . . has something of the look of old 

musty parchments, which he handleth and 
studieth much;" of Henry, "in religious 
matters a saint; but the very devil in politics; 
a son of thunder;" and of Washington, "a 
soldier, — a warrior; he is a modest man; 
sensible; speaks little; in action cool, like 
a bishop at his prayers." 

Yes, he spoke little, and his quiet, with so 
much wisdom behind his rare words, must 
have been a balm in that Babel of bickering 
and jealousy. The "Fathers" did not sit in 
an exalted harmony of patriotism and knee- 
breeches, as they have been too often pictured 
to us; it was with th^m a cat-and-dog affair, 
not seldom, as it is with us ; this it is better 
to know plainly, to save us from that shallow 
error of lamenting that in every respect we 
have fallen away from them. At any one 
moment of the world, there are thousands of 
133 



Seven times more f3?5te alive than wise men, but in 

r£ \ spite of this, we fall heirs to what the wise men 

Washington ^ 

accomplished, while the fools' work is mostly 
perishable in the long run. 

The journal of the Continental Congress 
discloses, in spite of its cautious meagreness, 
that the Fathers were inharmonious. "Tues- 
day, Sep. 6, 1774 . . . Resolved, That in 
determining questions in this Congress, each 
Colony or Province shall have one Vote. 
— The Congress not being possess'd of . . . 
materials for ascertaining the importance 
of each Colony.'' "The difficulty to be met 
was raised by Virginia, who claimed a prom- 
inence that the delegates from other Col- 
onies were unwilling to concede." [Con- 
necticut delegates to Governor Trumbull, 
Oct. 10, 1774.] We have further, and more 
piquant, elucidations from the diary of John 
Adams, whose nerves were frequently jangled 
by his colleagues. "Oct. 24, Monday. In 
Congress, nibbling and quibbling as usual. 
134 



There is no greater mortification than to sit Seven 

with half a dozen wits deliberating upon a ^^\°J 

° ^ Washington 

petition, address, or memorial. These great 
wits, these subtle critics, these refined gen- 
iuses, these learned lawyers, these wise 
statesmen, are so fond of showing their parts 
and powers, as to make their consultations 
very tedious." Thus he frets, in wholesale, 
and thus on another day he breaks out con- 
cerning one of the delegates from South 
Carolina: "a perfect Bob-o-Lincoln, a swal- 
low, a sparrow, a peacock; excessively vain, 
excessively weak, and excessively variable 
and unsteady, jejune, inane, and puerile." 
We need not believe that the gentleman over 
whom John Adams pours so many epithets 
was quite as bad as all that, when we look in 
the face those extraordinary and peevish 
words he wrote many years later about George 
Washington: "I will be bolder still, Mr. 
Taylor. Would Washington have ever been 
commander of the revolutionary army or 

135 



Seven president of ^i^eUnited States, if he had not 

^f'^V married the rich widow of Mr. Custis?" 

iVasntngton 

He also laid Jefferson's eminence to his wife's 
dollars. Was it because of the rich widow 
of Mr. Custis that John Adams had himself 
stood on the floor of Congress and nominated 
Washington for commander-in-chief? The 
true reasons shall presently be made clear. 
It may be gathered from the foregoing frag- 
ments from the journal of the Continental 
Congress and Adams's diary, that, beyond 
their common enemy, England, North and 
South had little in common; Virginia is 
claiming a prominence that angers New 
England, Massachusetts (in the voice of 
John Adams) is calling South Carolina a 
peacock, and here is the feeling of Washing- 
ton, soon after reaching Cambridge, as to the 
Massachusetts troops : " I dare say the men 
would fight very well (if properly ofiicered) 
although they are an exceeding dirty and 
nasty people." What do we hear in all these 
136 



voices but the preluding strains of that Civil Seven 

War waiting ahead of them, almost ninety ^^^^ °^ 

Washington 
years dov^n the road of time ? But on hap- 
pier days, the Fathers could sit in harmony, 
and perhaps we may deem this a preluding 
strain of the ultimate, sorely-tested Union: 
"Sep. 1 8, 1774. Resolved unanimously. 
That this assembly feels deeply the suffering 
of their countrymen in the Massachusetts 
Bay. ..." As to which, John Adams, in 
his nobler mood : "This was one of the hap- 
piest days of my life. ... I saw the tears 
gush into the eyes of the old, grave, pacific 
Quakers of Pennsylvania." 

There was now no escape from war; 
Washington went to Mount Vernon to pre- 
pare for it and was there until called back 
to Congress in Philadelphia. Again in his 
own words we read his mind, and the quick 
march of events: — 

"(January, 1775.) I had like to have 
forgot to express my entire approbation of 

137 



Seven the laudable^Dursuit you are engaged in, of 

S^\ training: an independent company. ... A 

Washington ^ ^ ^ ^ 

great number of very good companies . . . 
are now in excellent training; the people 
being resolved, altho' they wish for nothing 
more ardently than . . . reconciliation . . . 
not to purchase it at the expense of their 
liberty. . . . 

"General Gage acknowledges . . . his men 
made a very precipitate retreat from Concord. 
... A brother's sword has been sheathed in 
a brother's heart . . . and the peaceful plains 
of America are either to be drenched with 
blood, or inhabited by slaves. . . . 

"(June 1 6, 1775.) Mr. President: Though 
I am truly sensitive of the high honor done 
me in this appointment, yet I feel great 
distress from a consciousness that my abilities 
. . . may not be equal to the . . . trust. . . . 
As to pay, Sir . . . as no pecuniary consid- 
eration could have prompted me to accept 
this ... I do not wish to make any profit 

138 



from it. I will keep an exact account of my Seven 

expenses . . . and that is all I desire." (It ^f^^"-! 
^ ^ Washington 

was all he desired when he became Presi- 
dent, also.) 1 8 June, 1775. "My dearest, 
I am now set down to write you on a subject 
which fills me with inexpressible concern.*' 
. . . 19 June, 1775 (To his brother): "Dear 
Jack, — I have been called upon by the 
unanimous voice of the colonies to take the 
command of the continental army. ..." 
19 June, 1775. "Dear Sir, I am now Im- 
barked on a tempestuous ocean, from whence 
perhaps no friendly harbor is to be found." 
In spite of John Hancock's aspirations, 
his Massachusetts colleague, John Adams, 
had nominated the Virginian, triumphing 
over his frequent provincial narrowness with 
a generous and patriotic breadth. Since 
Braddock's defeat, Washington had been the 
greatest military figure in the colonies, his 
presence in Philadelphia had commanded 
new respect from those gathered there, and 
139 



Seven no other Ar»^ncan had the authority and 

^^^ ^ the following to override all jealousies and 

Washington ° *' 

unite all views. John Adams saw this, 
and certainly of him it may be said that the 
good he did lives after him, while it is rather 
the evil that is interred with his bones. — 
When Washington heard his name come from 
Adams's Hps, he took himself hastily out of 
the room; indeed, tradition says that he 
ran ! 

Since that May day in Williamsburg, 
1759, when he blushed and took his seat in 
the House of Burgesses, sixteen years had 
gone over his head. He was now forty-three, 
his figure not more filled out than formerly — 
it never became so — and he was as straight 
and strong as ever. But although his plan- 
tation, and riding out before sunrise, and 
hauling the seine, duck shooting, fox-hunting, 
the oyster man, — all these had kept his 
health vigorous and his muscles trained, 
his eyes had looked upon approaching storm, 
140 



his mind had been hot over the mother Seven 

country's attack on the core of her child's S\ 

■^ Waskington 

Hberty ("every act of authority of one man 
over another for v^hich there is not absolute 
necessity is tyrannical," as Beccaria had put 
it), and his heart was sore night and day at 
the thought of breaking with that mother 
country. As he was leaving Philadelphia 
for Boston, came the news of Bunker Hill, 
whereat he asked instantly, had the militia 
behaved itself ? " The hberties of the country 
are safe!" he exclaimed, on learning of the 
men's brave conduct. He was a true prophet, 
but much lay between that word and the 
goal; we may be sure that his serenity of 
countenance, of which so many have spoken, 
was a very grave serenity on the zd of July, 
1775. As the guns of Cambridge thundered 
for the arriving commander-in-chief, what- 
ever the bows he made to the admiring 
ladies who looked on, such bows were some- 
thing of a mask to his preoccupations, when 
141 



Seven he saw the>^i§ged, gaunt, ill-disciplined 

^<^^' ^^ troops, and remembered that there had been 
Washington 

2i total of four barrels of powder m New York 

when he passed through that city on his way 

to this army. He took command the next 

day. 



T42 



V. THE COMMANDER 



From Napoleon's sneer at this war, which -^^^^^ 

Asi£s of 
Washington now headed till December, 1783, ur v- 

to Lafayette's gallant and true retort to 
it, our Revolution has borne every grade 
of epithet, kind and unkind — as, a war 
of outposts, a war of skirmishes, a war of 
retreats, a war of observation. The last 
is as just a summary of so miscellaneous 
and outspread a story as could well be hit 
on; but what matters any name for a fact 
so portentous in human history ? As a 
war, its real military aspect is slowly emerging 
from the myth of uninterrupted patriotism 
and glory, universally taught to school 
children; its political hue is still thickly 
painted and varnished over by our writers. 
How many Americans know, for instance, 
L 145 



Seve?i that Englan^N^^as at first extremely lenient 

^^ ^ to us ? fought us (until 1 778) with one hand 

in a glove, and an olive branch in the other ? 
had any v^ish rather than to crush us; had no 
wish save to argue us back into the fold, 
and enforce argument with an occasional 
victory not followed up ? that in our counsels, 
the determination to be deaf to such argu- 
ment was not at all times unswerving ? and 
that had England once consented to keep 
the hands of Parliament off us, it is more 
than possible we should have agreed to re- 
main "within the empire" on those terms? 
How many know the English politics that 
lay behind Howe's conduct after the battles 
of Long Island, Brandywine, and German- 
town — lay behind his whole easy-going 
sojourn in this country ? Such acts as the 
burning of Falmouth (now Portland) and of 
Norfolk had not the sanction either of 
his policy or Lord North's; but they made, 
in Washington's phrase, "fiery arguments" 
146 



to sustain our cause. For any American Sevefi 

historian to speak the truth on these matters ^^^^ °^ 

Washington 
is a very recent phenomenon, their common 

design having been to leave out any facts 
which spoil the poHtical picture of the Revo- 
lution they chose to paint for our edification : 
a ferocious, blood-shot tyrant on the one side, 
and on the other a compact band of " Fathers," 
down-trodden and martyred, yet with im- 
peccable Hnen and bland legs. A wrong 
conception even of the Declaration of In- 
dependence as Jefferson's original invention 
still prevails; Jefferson merely drafted the 
document, expressing ideas well established in 
the contemporary air. Let us suppose that 
some leader of our own time were to write: 
"Three dangers to-day threaten the United 
States, any one of which could be fatal : unscru- 
pulous Capital, destroying man's liberty to com- 
pete; unscrupulous Labor, destroying man's 
Hberty to work; and undesirable Immigration, 
in which four years of naturalization are not 
147 



Seven g^irig ^o coum^pact four hundred years of 

t£^ , heredity. Unless the people check all of 

trashing ton -^ * * 

these, American liberty will become extinct;" 
— if some one were to write a new Declara- 
tion of Independence, containing such sen- 
tences, he could not claim originality for them; 
he would be merely stating ideas that are 
among us everywhere. This is what Jeffer- 
son did, writing his sentences loosely, be- 
cause the ideas they expressed were so famil- 
iar as to render exact definitions needless. 
Mr. Sydney George Fisher throws all these 
new lights upon the Revolution, which may 
perhaps (in its physical aspect) be likened 
to the gradual wanderings of a half-starved, 
half-naked man from Massachusetts through 
New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, 
down to the Virginia peninsula, where at 
length he corners his well-fed enemy, and 
defeats him. 

Lucky it is that the day of desperation and 
distrust did not set in during those first 
148 



months of Washington's command. From the Seven 

early moments of his ordering Indian hunt- „5^"^, 

•^ ° Washington 

ing shirts for the army, in order to aboHsh 
provincial distinctions, and deciding to be- 
siege Boston, the men knew that a great 
leader was come to them; this they never 
forgot through the starvation and nakedness 
and pennilessness, through the dismal swamp 
of years through which they followed him. 
Sometimes misery was too much for them, 
and they went to their homes in despair, 
unnerved for reenlistment, but in him they 
did not cease to believe. With the Boston 
siege his star rose high; he showed his best 
powers, and successfully. He read the mind 
of the foe, he was marvellous in keeping his 
counsels secret from foe and friend alike, 
and his moral courage was a sort of tonic 
in the air. Then his star — and ours — 
began to sink, helped by the great disap- 
pointment, which followed the great hope 
of Canada's conquest. He had written the 
149 



Seven noble and ^?5ip*1j^ troubled Schuyler, whose 

1^^ ^ experiences were proving almost too bitter 

for him, "We must bear up . . . and make 
the best of mankind as they are, since we 
cannot have them as we wish," and to such 
words Philip Schuyler^s generous heart re- 
sponded. But there was no one to prop 
Washington thus, as the sky darkened more 
and more; he had to be his own prop. At 
Long Island he was outflanked and beaten, 
the star sank lower, and by the end of 1776 
was near setting, when in the deep blackness 
of Congressional mistrust and military col- 
lapse, he risked everything, and the bright 
light of Trenton and Princeton shone upon 
the scene. Through all this his own 
powers showed brilliantly; the English moved 
out of New Jersey, and our cause had a 
precious breath of respite, while his masterly 
strategy got him from the British that title 
of "the Old Fox." But the star had not 
really risen yet. The next summer, 1777, 
150 



saw what malcontents always called "Fabian Seven 
policy"; nothing good happened, and then -^^^ y 
on September lo, Brandywine happened 
— something bad — another beating from 
Howe, much Hke Long Island, not a well- 
managed affair, only to be followed by more 
of the same kind, bringing up with German- 
town, October 5. It would have now been 
black indeed, but in twelve days came that 
great turning-point, Burgoyne's surrender 
up in the North. At this total failure of a 
whole British army, the world began to look 
at us with new eyes; but it is hardly un- 
natural that voices at home said, "No thanks 
to Washington." His Brandywine was con- 
trasted with Saratoga, for which the specious 
Gates got the credit which belonged to Schuy- 
ler and others, and then followed the Conway 
cabal. This attempt at him behind his 
back Washington met in a manner such 
that there was presently nothing left of it 
or its disgraced leaders; nor did the Valley 

151 



Seven Forge winten^witness nothing but evil — 

S^^ ^J rotten as Congress became at this time, 

Washington 

rotten as was the commissariat, rotten as 
was everything touched by the poHtical hand. 
Important people began to see one or two 
important facts : that we had swallowed one 
British Army, and that no British Army, 
occupy though it might our cities for winter- 
quarters and dancing, appeared to be able 
to swallow us. There sat Washington at 
Valley Forge, cold, hungry, and ragged, no 
doubt, — but he sat there, unconquered, 
and meanwhile our famous and priceless 
friend Steuben had arrived with all his 
military knowledge from Frederick the Great, 
and was drilling those hungry patriots at 
Valley Forge. The result showed at Mon- 
mouth Court House, where Clinton, the new 
general, got a bad fright and made a narrow 
escape, which would have been no escape 
at all, but for the treachery of Charles Lee. 
The hand which France now took, though with 
152 



D'Estaing and his ships it helped us to no Seven 
victory, helped us most importantly at once j^^ f 
in bringing to Europe a knowledge of George 
Washington. The French officers took news 
of his greatness and his honorable dealings 
back with them, and in this way, too, through 
him our star began to burn brighter. But 
some dismal swamp was left. We sat for 
a while at a deadlock with Britain, each side 
watching the other, and then occurred the 
treason of Arnold, a dark and heavy ca- 
tastrophe. Although help from Lafayette 
and France (where he had gone to stir it up) 
was really about to come again, it was scarce 
yet visible, even though Rochambeau was 
here, and the new year, 1781, began in great 
darkness. The soldiers had not been paid 
a penny for twelve months, and man cannot 
live on patriotism alone. There was mutiny, 
not unnatural, but of frightful menace, 
which was met by the politicians with their 
customary impotence in the face of any great 

153 



Seven reality. Thisbred more mutiny, killed 

j^^ f quickly by the soldierly Wayne, and in two 

months the sky brightened, never to cloud 
so thickly again. Money came from France, 
and patriotism could at length be fed and 
clothed; last of all, the sea was made ours 
by France. This overbore the disaster of 
Gates at Camden in the preceding August, 
already somewhat cancelled by his great 
successor Greene, and by September, Corn- 
wallis was at Yorktown. It was a terrible 
moment of suspense when the chance seemed 
that the Count de Grasse, with his ships 
that gave us the sea during that crucial 
moment, would sail away before Washington 
could get down from the Hudson to Vir- 
ginia; but he waited, and on the 17th of 
October CornwalHs surrendered. It was 
two years before Great Britain signed the 
treaty of peace, but with Yorktown ends the 
war. 

Let us now look at Washington himself 

154 



briefly, through these years which have been Seven 

briefly narrated. Once again we take sen- ^^^ ^ 

Washington 

tences from his letters covering many months : 
"I know the unhappy predicament I 
stand in; I know that much is expected of 
me ; I know, that without men, without arms, 
without ammunition, without anything fit 
for the accommodation of a soldier, little is to 
be done. . . . My own situation feels so 
irksome to me at times, that, if I did not 
consult the public good, more than my own 
tranquillity, I should long ere this have put 
everything to the cast of a Dye. . . . Your 
letter of the i8th descriptive of the jealousies 
and uneasiness which exist among the Mem- 
bers of Congress is really alarming — if 
the House is divided, the fabrick must fall. 
. . . I am sensible a retreating army is 
encircled with difficulties; that declining an 
engagement subjects to general reproach, 
and that the common cause may be affected 
by the discouragement it may throw over 

155 



Seven the minds dfnt^ army. Nor am I insensible 

g^^ V q£ |.j^g contrary effects, if a brilliant stroke 

Washington -^ 

could be made with any possibility of success, 
especially after our loss upon Long Island. 
But ... I can not think it safe ... to 
adopt a different system. . . . [This next 
is in a very dark hour.] In confidence I 
tell you that I was never in such an unhappy 
divided state since I was born. To lose 
all comfort and happiness on the one hand, 
whilst I am now fully persuaded that under 
such a system of management as has been 
adopted, I can not have the least chance for 
reputation, nor those allowances made which 
the nature of the case requires; and to be 
told, on the other, that if I leave the service 
all will be lost, is, at the same time that I 
am bereft of every peaceful moment, distress- 
ing in a degree. But I will be done with the 
subject, with the precaution to you that it 
is not a fit one to be publicly known or dis- 
cussed." 

156 



Such was the quahty of this heart : to know Seven 

its own pHght as clearly as that, but to go ^^\'^J 

^ ^ ^ ^ Washington 

Straight on, sinking self, both present and 
future, in the cause. His secrecy, and the 
inner state of his mind, come before us once 
in a vividness so impressive that over the 
well-known, oft-told Delaware crossing a 
new light is thrown. Just before that night, 
when politics, when the low state of the army, 
when the dearth of all good news for many 
months, had at last brought Washington to 
"put everything to the cast of a Dye," a 
Philadelphia acquaintance waited upon him. 
"In December I visited General Washing- 
ton in company with Col. Jos. Reed at the 
General's quarters about lo miles above 
Bristol, and four from the Delaware. I 
spent a night at a farm house near to him and 
the next morning passed near an hour with 
him in private. He appeared much depressed 
and lamented the ragged and dissolving state 
of his army in affecting terms. I gave him 

157 



Seven assurances SfH^e disposition of Congress to 

j^^\ support him, under his present difficulties 

and distresses. While I was talking to him 
I observed him to play with his pen and ink 
upon several small pieces of paper. One 
of them by accident fell upon the floor near 
my feet. I was struck with the inscription 
upon it. It was Victory or death.' 

"On the following evening I was ordered by 
General Cadwalader to attend the Militia 
at Dunk's ferry. An attempt was made to 
cross the Delaware at that place ... in 
order to co-operate with General Washington 
... in an attack upon the Hessians. . . . 
Floating ice rendered the passage of the river 
impracticable. . . . The next morning we 
heard that General Washington had been 
more successful . . . and taken one thousand 
Hessians. ... I found that the countersign 
of his troops of the surprize of Trenton was, 
'Victory or Death.'" 

For "near an hour," then, the Philadelphia 

158 



acquaintance, Dr. Benjamin Rush, had sat Seven 

with Washington, assuring him of support, ^^^ "^ 

Washington 

and Washington, with his mind full of 
Trenton that was to happen in thirty-six 
hours, had sat listening (or perhaps not 
listening much) and scrawling on little 
scraps of paper. Was "victory or death" 
upon all of them, or was he writing various 
countersigns to see how they looked ? At 
all events, there in the three words is his 
secret mind before Trenton, while the visitor 
discoursed about Congress; that pen-scrib- 
bling is a very striking instance of how, 
when the spirit of a man is supremely con- 
centrated, he will often perform trivial, 
almost unconscious acts. To one familiar 
with the relations between Washington and 
Dr. Rush, it may occur that these lay at the 
bottom of Washington's silence; but this 
would be an error. Dr. Rush's attack on 
Dr. Shippen was still to come and to create 
in Washington the distrust made final by 

159 



Seven Dr. Rush's a4t^dc on himself in the anonymous 

Jf\ letter written to Patrick Henry. All that — 

Wasntngton •' 

the face professions of friendship and the 
back-hand stab, Henry's loyalty and Wash- 
ington's deeply moved response to it — was 
still more than a year off, and Washington 
would have been silent to any visitor about 
Trenton, for silence as to his plans was 
inveterate with him. 

His bright letter to Congress the day after 
Trenton is a marked change from his dark 
letter the day before it, and in still greater 
contrast with the whole darkness of his mind 
^ disclosed to his brother during that black 

December, 1776: "If every nerve is not 
strained to recruit the new army ... I 
think the game is pretty nearly up. . . . How- 
ever, under a full persuasion of the justice 
of our cause, I can not entertain an Idea that 
it will finally sink, tho' it may remain for 
some time under a cloud." 

Von Moltke, whose word may be consid- 
160 



ered as final authority, called Washington Seven 

one of the world's very greatest strategists, ^^f\ 

•^ ^ to ' Washingtot 

adding: "No finer movement was ever 
executed than the retreat across the Jerseys, 
the return across the Delaware a first time, 
and then a second, so as to draw out the 
enemy in a long thin line/' Genius usually 
seeks its element as a duck the water, 
as Alexander looked for "more worlds to 
conquer." Washington always looked for 
Mount Vernon, always went back to his 
crops and his trees, made war as a public 
duty only; and his military achievement 
seems to be the fruit, not so much of mili- 
tary genius, but of those great powers and 
qualities of firmness, sagacity, observation, 
and detail, which he showed in every 
undertaking either of war or peace, and 
of his invaluable training in the Indian 
wars. 

That constitution, of whose strength he 
wrote Dinwiddie in the early days, was called 
M i6i 



Seven upon to me^tdemands as heavy as those 

g^^ y upon his mind; — after the defeat on Long 

Washington ^ ° 

Island, for instance, he was on horseback 
during the greater part of forty-eight hours, 
and his abihty to laugh uproariously some- 
times must have been an excellent, if rare, 
relief for him. General Putnam provided 
one great chance for it during the Boston 
vs^inter, while several treacheries were being 
unearthed. Of one of these they found the 
missing link at quite a serious crisis, when the 
hiding of our lack of powder was near being 
ruined by spies. The missing link turned 
out to be a large fat woman, and so trium- 
phant and eager was large fat Putnam to 
bring her quickly to headquarters, that he 
clapped her a-straddle in front of him on 
his horse. Washington, looking out of an 
upper window, saw this sight approaching, 
— an important Puritan General apparently 
bearing the spoils of war brazenly before all 
eyes — and it is said that he was entirely 
162 



overcome, but had mastered his gravity by Seven 
the time the missing Hnk was deposited in ^J'J^^^^^ 
his presence by her assiduous and innocent 
captor. In the midst of matters so few of 
which are laughing matters, it would be agree- 
able to tell and dwell upon every instance of 
Washington's mirth; but the knowledge 
must be enough, that he could and did laugh, 
and that the incident of the fat woman is not 
the solitary jet of hilarity whose radiance 
twinkles in that dusk. Of the dearth of 
powder in one instance an idea may be 
had by this : owing to a mistake in the report 
of the Massachusetts committee, instead of 
four hundred and eighty-five quarter casks 
of powder, there were only thirty-five half 
barrels, or not a half a pound to a man. It 
is recorded that when Washington heard this, 
he did not utter a word for half an hour. 
But presently in the midst of more trials we 
find him quoting poetry, philosophically: 
"I will not lament or repine . . . because 
163 



Seven I am in fti^reat measure a convert to 

Ages of 



Washington 



Mr. Pope's opinion, that whatever is, is 
right. ..." 

To quote poetry, or make any literary 
allusion, is so rare a thing with him in his 
letters, that an instance of it is always a 
slight surprise. He writes to young Custis 
at his schooling, "For, as Shakespeare says, 
*He that robs me of my good name enriches 
not himself, but renders me poor indeed,' 
or words to that effect." In another place 
he serves himself of Hamlet with "in my 
mind's eye.'* He several times uses "under 
the rose," and all these seem natural, save 
for their great scarcity. But it is quite 
astonishing to come upon "m petto,'^ and 
one comes upon it only once. He seems 
fond of the word " maugre," already archaic 
in his day, and one wonders where he got it; 
but there is one phrase he uses with such 
evident relish, and so repeatedly, that to 
omit the instances here would be to lose not 
164 



only an interesting little fact of his style, Seven 

but a sign of somethinp; deep in the man. It ^^\°-' 

^ fe r Washington 

is at one of the deeply disheartening hours 
of the war that he writes George Mason from 
Middlebrook, 27 March, 1779: "I have seen 
without despondency even for a moment . . . 
the hours which America have stiled her 
gloomy ones, but I have beheld no day since 
the commencement of hostilities that I have 
thought her liberties in such eminent danger 
as at present. . . . Why do they not come 
forth to save their Country ? let this voice 
my dear Sir call upon you — Jefferson 
and others — do not from a mistaken opin- 
ion that we are about to set down under our 
own vine, & our own fig tree, let our hitherto 
noble struggle end in ignom'y — believe 
me when I tell you there is danger of it — 
I have pretty good reasons for thinking that 
Administration a little while ago had re- 
solved to give the matter up, and negociate 
a peace with us upon almost any terms; 

165 



Seven but I shall tf©mmch mistaken if they do not 

^^\^J now from the present state of our currency 

Washington * ^ 

and dissensions & other circumstances push 
matters to the utmost extremity. ..." In 
that ringing appeal, the pet phrase appears 
for the first time, it would seem. And now, 
let the others come : — 

(To Oliver Wolcott.) "... but if ever 
this happens, it must be under my own 
vine and fig-tree." 

(To David Humphreys.) "... but neither 
came to hand until long after I had 
left the chair of Government, and was 
seated in the shade of my own Vine and 
Figtree." 

(To Lafayette.) "... With what con- 
cerns myself personally, I shall not take up 
your time further than to add, that I have 
once more retreated to the shades of my own 
vine and fig Tree." 

(To Mrs. Sarah Fairfax.) "Worn out in 
a manner by the toils of my past labor, 1 
i66 



am again seated under my vine and fig- Seven 
tree." 

(To John Adams.) "It is unnecessary, I 
hope, for me in that event to express the 
satisfaction it will give Mrs. Washington and 
me to see Mrs. Adams and yourself, and 
company in the shade of our vine and fig- 



tree." 



(To J. Q. Adams.) "I am now as you 
supposed the case would be when you then 
wrote, seated under the shade of my Vine 
and Fig-tree." 

We may smile, but what a pathos is in 
these reiterations ! They all belong to his 
last years at Mount Vernon. 

One other locution seems to have pleased 
him, and of its several appearances we give 
but one, from a letter to Charles Cotesworth 
Pinckney: "P.S. — Mr. Lewis and Nelly 
Custis fulfilled their matrimonial engagement 
on the 22nd of February. In consequence 
the former, having relinquished the Lapp of 
167 



Washington 



Seven Mars for tli^^ports of Venus, has declined 

^^ ^. a Military appointment." 

Scattered through his letters during the 
period of the Revolution, we come upon 
various apologies for real or seeming neglect 
in hospitality, or cordiality — for failures, 
in short, to show people the attention which 
they had the right to expect; in these apolo- 
gies he mentions, among other things, the 
weight of his correspondence. As much as 
he could he used secretaries, giving them 
memorandums, sketched quickly in his own 
handsome hand, with many abbreviations: 
"The time of my arrival — The situation of 
the Troops — Works — & things in general 
— Enemy on Bunkers Hill. . . . Express 
gratitude for the rediness wch. the Congress 
& diff. Committees have shown to make 
everything as convenient and agreeable 
as possible. . . ." But of course he could 
not use secretaries for everything. His brill- 
iant contemporaries and colleagues not seldom 
i68 



shook their heads solemnly over his writings ; Seven 

but they need not have done so. They did ^£^"^/:^ 

■^ -^ Washington 

so because his sagacity and moral weight so 
stood out during these distracting times 
that such gifted men as JefFerson and Ham- 
ilton fell dupe to a very human instinct — 
they wanted to find something which they 
could do better than he could, and they 
picked out his English style. They were 
quite mistaken. While these collateral 
fathers of the country could spell words 
better than Washington, use words better 
they could not. No better prose than his 
was written, when he took time to it. There 
are periods during the war (and periods 
afterward) when controlled passion or deep 
concern causes his language to reach the 
highest level of expression and dignity. 
During the Conway Cabal, in his papers 
public and private the style rises so that 
it would be hard to find writing to sur- 
pass it. Specimens are too long to quote, 
169 



Seven but they ara^^asy to find in the sixth volume 

^" V Qf ]-jjs correspondence (edited by Ford), 

Washington ^ ^ J J^ 

where the reader may look especially at a 
letter to Gates, page 362, and one to Bryan 
Fairfax, page 389. For the lesson to political 
manners of to-day that it contains, we quote 
this fragment from the same volume. "If 
General Conway means, by cool receptions, 
mentioned in the last paragraph of his letter 
of the 31st ultimo, that I did not receive him 
in the language of a warm and cordial 
friend, I readily confess the charge. I did 
not, nor shall I ever, till I am capable of the 
arts of dissimulation. These I despise, and 
my feelings will not permit me to make 
professions of friendship to the man I deem 
my enemy, and whose system of conduct 
forbids it." Conway was at last run to 
earth, and his tendered resignation was 
accepted when he did not mean it to be. 
This so disconcerted him that he wrote saying 
his language had been misconstrued: "I 
170 



am an Irishman," he protests, "and learnt Seven 

my EngHsh in France." This is probably ^^^ ^^ 

^ ^ ^ y Washington 

our only heritage of pure gayety from the 
whole contemptible business, in which certain 
professed friends cut so poor a figure, and 
Lafayette, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick 
Henry shine so brightly. We close this 
brief account of Washington's prose style 
with one final sentence to show both his own 
modesty on this head, and how needless 
such modesty was: — 

"When I look back to the length of this 
letter, I am so much astonished and frightened 
at it myself that I have not the courage to give 
it a careful reading for the purpose of cor- 
rections. You must, therefore, receive it with 
all its imperfections, accompanied with this 
assurance, that, though there may be in- 
accuracies in the letter, there is not a single 
defect in the friendship." 

His whole bitterness over the Conway Ca- 
bal is contained in one sentence written to 
171 



Seven Governor Li^ngston, but omitted from the 

Jf\ second draft of the letter: "With many, it 

Washington •' 

is a sufficient cause to . . . wish the ruin of 
a man, because he has been happy enough to 
be the object of his country s favor." He 
underHned the words himself, and this, with 
the subsequent omission of the whole, shows 
in a stroke his feelings and his reticence. 
We have another graphic instance of character 
in two notes written General Howe on the 
same day, concerning the shorter of which the 
Chevalier de Pontgibaud gives the following 
account: — 

"The British, occupied in the pleasures 
which they found in Philadelphia, allowed 
us to pass the winter in tranquillity; they 
never spoke of the camp at Valley Forges, 
except to joke about it, and we for our part 
might almost have forgotten that we were 
in the presence of an enemy if we had not 
received a chance visitor. We were at table 
at headquarters — that is to say in the mill, 
172 



which was comfortable enough — one day, Seven 

when a fine sportinp; doe, which was evidently Jf\ 

^ ° ^ •' Washington 

lost, came to ask for some dinner. On its 
collar were the words, General Howe. It 
was the British Commander's dog. It was 
sent back under a flag of truce, and General 
Howe replied by a warm letter of thanks to 
this act of courtesy on the part of his enemy, 
our general." This was Washington's note 
to Howe: "General Washington's compli- 
ments to General Howe, — does himself 
the pleasure to return him a dog, which 
accidentally fell into his hands, and, by the 
inscription on the collar, appears to belong 
to General Howe." The official one that was 
written on the same day, October 6, 1777, 
concerning depredations attributed to Amer- 
icans and done by British, contains language 
severely different, and would give no hint of 
dogs and flags of truce: Washington the 
commander, writing to Howe the commander, 
was one thing; Washington the courteous 



Seven lover of sp^wi^ writing to Howe the owner 

Jf\ . of a lost dog, was another. 

Washington ^ 

The Chevalier de Pontgibaud errs, as the 
reader will have perceived, as to the place 
where this happened, for they were not at 
Valley Forge so early as October, and it was 
"near Pennibecker's Mill" — the Chevalier 
is right about there being a mill, and the fact 
that at Valley Forge there was also a mill 
is what probably led to this immaterial con- 
fusion. Washington's note proves the ac- 
curacy of the story, and the following 
anecdotes also narrated by de Pontgibaud 
are as vivid, and may equally be ac- 
cepted, whether they occurred at "Valley 
Forges,'* as he called it, or not exactly 
there. 

"One day we were at dinner at head- 
quarters; an Indian entered the room, 
walked round the table, and seized a large 
joint of hot roast beef. We were all much 
surprised, but General Washington gave 
174 



orders that he was not to be interfered with, Seven 
saying laughingly, that it was apparently Jr\ 
the dinner hour of this Mutius Scaevola 
of the New World. On another occasion 
a chief came into the room where our Gen- 
erals were holding a council of war. Wash- 
ington, who was tall and very strong, rose, 
coolly took the Indian by the shoulders, and 
put him outside the door." 

It may be that the degrading dissensions, 
incompetences, and dishonesties of Congress 
reached, about the Valley Forge period, a 
low-water mark that they never surpassed in 
war time (in peace time later, they did) ; 
but however that is, it can scarce too much be 
insisted that our Revolution was not a sort 
of flawless architectural fabric, made wholly 
of colonial pillars and patriotism, but that it 
had a sordid, squalid back-door and prem- 
ises, of which Gouverneur Morris writes 
Washington: "Had our Saviour addressed 
a Chapter to the Rulers of Mankind ... I 



Seven am persu^dgd his good sense would have 

rrf\ ^^^t2it.&6. this ttxt — be not wise overmuch. . . . 

Washington 

The most precious moments pass unheeded 
away Hke vulgar Things." Such is a gentle 
way of putting it; but hearken now to the 
anything but gentle Washington : — 

(To James Warren, 31 March, 1779.) 
"The measure of iniquity is not yet filled 
. . . Speculation, Peculation . . . afford 
. . . glaring instances of its being the inter- 
est .. . of too many ... to continue the 
war. . . . Shall a few designing men ... to 
gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly 
fabric we have been rearing at the expense of 
so much time, blood, & treasure 1 And shall 
we at last become the victims of our own 
abominable lust of gain \ Forbid it Heaven ! 
Forbid it all & every State in the Union ! 
. . . Our cause is noble. It is the cause 
of mankind. ..." 

If absolutely nothing from his letters were 
collected save passages devoted to the polit- 
176 



ical iniquities, such passages would make Seven 

3. volume; so would the passages asking for -^^^/-^ 

^ ^ ^ Washington 

powder, and so those asking for food and 
clothing, and a fourth could be filled with his 
protests against short enlistments, by reason 
of which his army was constantly dissolving 
in his hands. A Harvard degree, and a 
medal from Congress (in one of its more 
amiable and coherent moods) could not have 
gone very far to compensate him for what he 
was enduring. 

"General Fry, that wonderful man, has 
made a most wonderful hand of it. . . . He 
has drawn three hundred and seventy five 
dollars, never done one day's duty, scarce 
been three times out of his home. ... I 
have made a pretty good slam among such 
kind of officers . . . having broke one Colo, 
and two Captains for cowardly behavior . . . 
two Captains for drawing more provisions 
and pay than they had men . . . and one 
for being absent from his post when the enemy 



Seven appeared. . . . Different regiments were 

S^\ upon the point of cutting each other's throats 

for a few standing locusts near their encamp- 
ment, to dress their victuals with ... it 
will be very difficult to prevail on them to 
remain a moment longer than they choose 
themselves. . . . Such a dearth of public 
spirit ... I never saw before . . . and pray 
God I may never be witness to again. . . . 
The Connecticut troops will be prevailed 
upon to stay no longer than their terms. . . . 
Could I have forseen what I have, and am 
likely to experience, no consideration upon 
earth should have induced me to accept this 
command . . . but we must bear up . . . 
and make the best of mankind as they are, 
since we can not have them as we wish.*' 
This last philosophical sentence, it will be 
remembered, he wrote his friend General 
Schuyler, and it is a thought we come upon 
several times. Thus, after blowing off his 
just rage, would he reenter the splendid 

178 



poise of his staying-power. It is exhilarating Seven 

to find him taking a "good slam" with his ^^^ ^ 

Washington 

muscles also on a certain occasion. He rode 
into camp suddenly upon a fist fight, begun 
with mere snow-balling, between some newly 
arrived Virginians and some New England 
men. Such a fight was of vital menace to 
the army, full of northern and southern 
jealousies. He leaped from his horse, 
took two Virginians by their throats, 
and shook them in such fashion, talking 
the while, that in a very few moments 
he and they were the only people left in 
sight. 

No excess of investigation (and there can 
be such a thing) would enable us to put our 
finger upon the moment of the lowest ebb 
of Washington's staying-power during this 
war of rags and starvation. There were 
several moments of very low ebb ; but tradi- 
tion hands one down from Valley Forge, 
connected with a white-handled pen-knife, 
179 



Sevc?i upon whictki^mall instrument the fortunes of 



res of 
Washington 



America would seem during that moment 
to have hung. Together with a clock, whose 
hands were stopped by an attending physi- 
cian in Washington's bedroom as he ex- 
pired, and which have marked that hour ever 
since, this white-handled pen-knife is treas- 
ured in the Masonic museum at Alexandria, 
and was given to Washington by his mother 
when he was about fifteen years old. It 
will be remembered that, but for her, he 
would have entered the navy in 1746. His 
brother Lawrence had obtained for him a 
midshipman's warrant, but it had gone much 
further than that; the boy's kit had been 
carried aboard, and he was himself on the 
point of following it, when a messenger 
from his mother overtook him, and brought 
him her final word, so imploring, or so per- 
emptory — tradition says not which — that 
he abandoned his project, and went home — 
back to more school and mathematics, as 
180 



has been related early In these pages. In Seven 

the next order for supplies that his mother ^^^ ^J 

Washington 

sent to England, she asked for a "good pen- 
knife/* This, when it came, she gave to the 
boy in token of his recent signal submission 
to her, adding, "Always obey your supe- 
riors." He carried the token all his life, and 
to some of his intimates he from time to time 
explained its significance. One day at Valley 
Forge, when the more than half-naked men 
had eaten no meat for many days, and when 
Congress had failed once more to provide, 
or even to suggest any way for getting, food 
and clothes, the ebb was reached, and Wash- 
ington wrote his resignation as commander- 
in-chief of the army. Among the generals 
sitting in council, Henry Knox spoke out, 
reminding him of the pen-knife, and upon 
Washington's asking what that had to do with 
it, he said : " You were always to obey your 
superiors. You were commanded to lead 
this army. No one has commanded you to 
i8i 



Seven cease leading^^' Washington paused, and 

"^^^ *?/ then answered, "There is something in that. 

Washington 

I will think it over." Half an hour later, he 
tore his resignation to pieces. 

The rumor of what he said and what he did 
through all these hours of struggle and des- 
peration, spread wide and far from the centre 
of them, spread across the seas, spread to all 
distant corners of travel, and the blunt remark 
of a Scotchman in Key West bears witness to 
what was thought of him by enemies of his 
cause. News had come that Washington was 
captured, and the Scot was sorry to hear of this, 
"for he is too gude a mon to be hangit," he 
said, feeling sure this would be the prisoner's 
fate. His renown rose to a new height in 
that passage of diplomacy that he had with 
Lord Howe over the manner in which he 
should be styled in letters by the British 
commander; after he had sent back a com- 
munication addressed "To George Washing- 
ton Esq"," and a second, where the point was 
182 



still dodged, "To George Washington Esq'^ Seven 

&c. &c. &;c.," Congress thanked him for thus Jf\ 

Washington 

asserting his dignity, and further resolved that 
they "have such entire confidence in his judg- 
ment . . . they v^ill give him no particular 
directions." American dignity is not in- 
variably so v^ell guarded by its soldiers, or 
understood by its civilians. As for the 
"entire confidence" of Congress, that short- 
vs^inded affair soon gave out — it spent its 
time in giving out and reviving; — presently 
this "entire confidence" vs^as near shifting 
to Gates, and soon after Gates had blown 
over came what may have been the heaviest 
blow, personally, that Washington sustained 
— Arnold's treason. About this, when he 
learned it, Washington remarked, simply 
and quietly: "Whom can we trust now?" 
Arnold had been a gallant fighter, in fact, a 
brilliant fighter, and Washington and others 
(John Adams, for instance) were of opinion 
tliat his services had met poor recognition; 

183 



Seven 
Ages of 
Washington 



thus, when*%U^bottom falseness of his nature 
was revealed suddenly, it was for a moment 
overwhelming. From such experiences he got 
the habit of feeding upon all good news that 
came, and making the most possible of this, 
and the least possible of ill news; but if good 
news had been his only nourishment, he would 
often have starved, and the truth is, he fed 
upon his own inexhaustible determination, 
becoming at times in the general dearth of 
money, food, clothing, and powder, himself 
the only sinews of war that we possessed. 
Yet, with this fortitude, he wept like a child 
when he saw, across the Hudson, his soldiers 
being bayoneted. In some actions he so 
recklessly forgot himself, that they seized 
his bridle and led him away from needless 
exposure. It seems, too, that he was im- 
prudent (certainly once) in cold blood. 
Shortly before Brandywine, he was recon- 
noitring the country near Wilmington, with 
Greene and Lafayette. They had ridden all 
184 



day, and night came, and with night a storm, Seven 

from the fury of which they sought shelter in ^^\°J 

^ ^ to IVashington 

a farm-house. The enemy was everywhere, 
likely to capture them at any moment, and 
this Washington knew; but nothing that 
Greene or Lafayette said could induce him 
to budge. He stayed on, immovably, and 
to their dismay stayed all night. As they 
rode away in the morning, he candidly agreed 
that this had been most unwise and danger- 
ous ! We can only guess at what made him 
do such a thing. Probably he was dog-tired, 
and found the rain very wet, and the fire very 
dry and pleasant, and told himself that no- 
body would be looking for him in such a 
storm, or that if they did, he would kill them. 
Or perhaps he told himself nothing at all 
beyond that he would not budge from the 
fire and the house till morning, let Greene 
and Lafayette protest as they would. Upon 
an occasion very similar to this, and at about 
the same period of the war, we have his own 

185 



Seven word for hT§^*6^tigue when he stopped at 

^^^ °^ night-fall again at a house in this same tract 

Washington ^ ^ 

of country. It is handed down by the de- 
scendants of this house, that one of its daugh- 
ters, then a Httle girl, was all curiosity and 
excitement upon learning who it was that her 
elders were harboring. She begged hard for 
a sight of the great visitor, and she had her 
wish. "Well, my dear,'' said the general, 
"you see a very tired man in a very dirty shirt." 
Since a tale of Washington incautious has 
been told, let it be set off by one showing the 
shrewd wiles of that strategy for which he 
earned his name of "The Old Fox," from 
those whom he so constantly outwitted. 
During the Morristown winter, when the 
army was all but gone to nothing — some 
three thousand men were the whole of it — 
it was discovered a spy from Howe in New 
York was in the camp. Washington gave 
orders that he should be warmly treated, as 
if taken into friendship and confidence; 
i86 



he also ordered all his colonels to make Seven 

false returns of their regiments' strength. ^^\°-^ 

^ ^ Washington 

These papers, reporting twelve thousand men 
on duty, were left in very accessible pigeon- 
holes in the adjutant's office. One day, while 
the spy was chatting with the adjutant, a mes- 
sage came from the commander requesting to 
see the adjutant at once. Thus carefully left 
alone in the room, the spy punctually per- 
formed the trick he was intended to perform, 
got at the reports, read them through (com- 
fortable time for this was allowed him), and 
went off happy to Howe in New York with 
the official figures of Washington's strength 
— twelve thousand. Soon after this another 
spy came, a young officer, who discovered the 
truth, and returned to Howe with it. But 
he was not believed ; had not his predecessor 
secured the official figures .? Not only was he 
discredited, but severely treated for being 
so incompetent and dangerous a spy. 
So Washington was not caught at Morris- 

187 



Seven town, or atthe farm-house, or anywhere, 

Jf\ and amid rags and starvation brought the 

Washington ° ^ 

war through ; hindered by a host of difficulties, 
helped by many thin^ — brave generals, patri- 
otic civilians, devoted soldiers, and not a little 
by the Whig party in England ; but most of all 
by the huge shoulders of his own endurance. 
How did his face look at the end of it 
that noon in New York at a tavern down by 
the Whitehall Ferry, the 4th of December, 
1783 ? He was there to say good-by to his 
assembled generals, privately, among them- 
selves, before starting for Congress to resign 
his commission. A boat waited to take 
him over the river on his way to Annapolis. 
In that tavern, Fraunce's Tavern, his generals 
had gathered, — Knox, and the rest of those 
dear to him. The sight of these brothers- 
at-arms, as he entered the room, deprived 
him of utterance; again he stood in that 
overcome silence that the house of Burgesses 
had known in him long ago, but it was not 
188 



any more the young, blushing, brown-haired Seven 

Washington. His back was not bent with the ^^^ ^ 

^ Washington 

load carried since July 3, 1775, and never 
set down; but he had looked upon much 
death, much need, much distress, and he 
had known disloyalty, ingratitude, and treason 
once, in the likeness of a trusted fellow-soldier, 
during that long journey. Benedict Arnold 
cannot have failed to drive something into 
Washington's soul that was not there before, 
and now, in the tavern room with those who had 
gone through so much with him, what sort of 
face did he turn upon these comrades ? It must 
have been a face of many memories. He filled 
a glass of wine and drank them his farewell. 
"I cannot come to each of you to take my 
leave," he said, "but shall be obliged if each 
of you will come and take me by the hand." 
No word was spoken after that. Each took 
him by the hand, and then all went down to 
the shore with him. There they stood watch- 
ing, until the boat took him from their sight. 
i8q 



VI. THE PRESIDENT 



VI 

He seems to have counted himself now a Seven 

man whose hard work was done, whose rest ^^^ °-^ 

Washington 
was come, a private man, for whom his vine 

and fig-tree were at last in store; he seems 
not in the least to have suspected that the 
new country had further need of him, and 
he turned his face with relief to Mount 
Vernon. The war had used his body hard; 
indeed, his accidental allusion, in a very 
dangerous moment for him and the country, 
to his impaired eyesight had saved the critical 
situation. Between Yorktown and the sign- 
ing of the peace, the much-enduring army 
thought it was time for at least a little pay, 
but Congress, no longer quite so frightened 
as in the days when it had fled from 
the enemy's approach, preached sermons of 

o 193 



Seven resignation^^^d suggested that the men 

.£ 7 placed too high a value upon mere leavine 

Washington ^^ C5 r & 

their homes and giving their lives. It v^as an 
incautious hour to choose for so pious a lec- 
ture; to the men's angry minds it occurred 
that there vs^ere not many steps to march 
between themselves and the control of the 
Government, and they talked of their be- 
loved leader as Dictator. Washington's words 
quickly burst such a bubble — but this did 
not stop the mutinous spirit, and Congress, 
terrified once again by an army, once again 
had none save Washington to look to for the 
safety of its skin. It was a last chance for the 
intriguing Gates to rise from the discredit 
of his defeat at Camden, and he played it to 
the limit. His underhand counsels to the 
men that their cause was just (which it most 
assuredly was) and that they must demand 
their rights, led them to open sedition, and 
there was Washington where Gates wished 
him to be, of necessity protecting the Govern- 
194 



ment which was in the wrong, and opposing Seven 

the men who loved him, and who knew the ^^^ ^•' 

Washington 

Government was wrong. There was an 
hour set for him to meet them, and silence, 
instead of shouts, was their greeting to him. 
He had a written address prepared, but on 
rising to begin it, the text was dim to his eyes, 
and as he felt for his glasses in that moment 
during which his own influence and perhaps 
the country's fate trembled, he spoke simply 
to the gathered and sullen soldiers the first 
words that came to him: "I have not only 
grown gray but blind in your service/' By 
this unpremeditated touch of nature the whole 
trouble was melted away, the formal address 
was needless, tears came to the men's cheeks, 
and they were willing to be patient for their 
leader's sake. 

To Mount Vernon, then, he turned with 
his gray hairs and weakened sight, reaching 
there on Christmas eve, "to spend the re- 
mainder of my days," he wrote, "in cultivat- 

195 



Seven ing the afF5^ii4jns of good men, and in the 

^^\°J practice of the domestic virtues. ... A 

Washington * 

glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always 
ready . . . those who expect more will be 
disappointed." He presently revisited the 
trails of his youth, the backwoods, returning 
thence to the pastoral home existence that he 
supposed he was now free to enjoy. His 
daily rising was before the light, his corre- 
spondence done by the half-past seven break- 
fast, after which he rode over his fields until 
the half-past two dinner; this was followed 
by writing or by whist until dark. A guest 
speaks of his agreeableness, his delighting in 
anecdotes and adventures, silent upon all 
personal exploits; but Miss Custis saw 
another side, and described him as being 
constantly thoughtful and silent, with lips 
moving. Nothing said about him by any 
one at any time so conveys his inward iso- 
lation — inevitable consequence of a great 
man's moral and mental load — as this 
196 



report of the moving lips. The money Seven 

Congress now offered as reward for his ser- ^^^ '^J 

° Washington 

vices he decHned, although his fortune was 
shrunk and his estate in dilapidation from the 
war. He speaks picturesquely of returning 
to find his buildings suffering from many 
wounds, and here is one of several allusions 
to straitened circumstances: — 

"... the bonds which were due to me 
before the Revolution, were discharged during 
the progress of it — with a few exceptions in 
depreciated paper (in some instances as low 
as a shilling in the pound). . . . Such has 
been the management of my Estate ... as 
scarcely to support itself. . . . To keep 
myself out of debt I have found it expedient 
now and then to sell Lands. ..." But, 
without dwelling further upon his business 
sense, it is enough to add that he so redeemed 
his fortune from its serious injuries as to die 
the second richest man in America. His 
consummate insight regarding the western 
197 



Seven future of TR^country led him to buy lands 

Jf\ along; all the great rivers, from the Mohawk 

Washington ^ ^ 

to the Kanawha, that he foresaw must be 
the highways of travel and commerce; in 
some cases such lands cost him five pounds 
the hundred acres and were sold for five 
pounds the acre. Yet his many directions 
as to buying and selling show him to have 
been far above "sharp practice": "Major 
Harrison must be sensible that no one can be 
better acquainted with the land than I am; 
it would be unnecessary therefore (if he has 
any inclination to sell it) to ask a price which 
it will not bear; but if he is disposed to take 
a reasonable price, and will act the part of a 
frank and candid man in fixing it, I would 
not have you higgle (which I dislike) in 
making a bargain." Such were his methods, 
and his fortune came by no means like so 
many of those built upon dishonor at the 
present day, but as the fair result of superior 
sagacity and application. "Land rich," how- 
198 



ever, as he died, he often hved "land poor," Seven 
and with income obHterated for a season in S\ 

Washington 

consequence of patriotic neglect to watch 
his own affairs while attending to the affairs 
of the nation; yet his need of ready money 
did not check his aid to others in need — 
the wife of Lafayette, for example, to whom 
he sent two hundred guineas at once on 
learning of her husband's imprisonment, 
or the sufferers from pestilence in Philadel- 
phia to whom he offered assistance through 
Bishop White, "without ostentation or men- 
tion of my name," as he requests the bishop. 
Nor was it his fashion, as the mode is now, 
to put on the mask of a benefactor and thus 
disguised to label colleges and libraries with 
his own name, thus really leaving his money 
to himself. His gifts to education were 
gifts, and not advertisements or obituaries. 
Intercolonial jealousies were, as we have 
seen, in full blossom already by 1776, and 
now they ripened quickly to full fruit. The 
199 



Seven common ^^emy gone, everybody had full 

Jf\ time to fall upon his neighbor, and he did so, 

Washington t^ fe ' 

until they were all nearer to destroying their 
new country than King George had been; 
a republic is its own worst enemy, and we 
showed this then as we show it to-day. 
Washington would have despised the view 
expressed by a lesser public servant: "I 
had rather let the old ship sink, than keep 
pumping at her all the while;'' therefore he 
tasted but little of his vine and fig-tree, and 
soon returned to the ship and the pumping. 
Lafayette, on December 30, 1777, had written 
to him: "Take away for an instant that 
modest diffidence of yourself . . . you would 
see very plainly that if you were lost to Amer- 
ica, there is nobody who could keep the army 
and the revolution for six months. There 
are open dissensions in congress, parties 
who hate one another as much as the common 
enemy." If Washington's modesty forbade 
his believing this, the quarrelling factions 
200 



knew it to be true; cat and dog came running Seven 

to him, and soon he was presiding over the Jf\. 

' ^ ^ Washington 

Constitutional Convention. 

And now is the time to speak of the third 
cardinal influence in his life. It rests not on 
a level with the others, coming upon Wash- 
ington in the full high-noon of his growth; 
but in clearing and shaping his mind about 
what foundations our new government should 
rest on, and how these should be laid, its im- 
portance is unique. The other two were influ- 
ences upon character^ the rules of civility and 
the friendship of Fairfax; the third and last 
is Alexander Hamilton. Of him, during the 
war, we have this first glimpse recorded : — 

"I noticed a youth, a mere stripling, 
small, slender, almost delicate in frame, 
marching beside a piece of artillery with a 
cocked hat pulled down over his eyes, ap- 
parently lost in thought, with his hand rest- 
ing on the cannon, and every now and then 
patting it as he mused, as if it were a favourite 

201 



Seven horse or a ggtp lay thing." This was Hamil- 



res of 
Washington 



ton, not quite twenty years old. Washing- 
ton, too, caught sight of him at about this 
time, noticing (amidst some disastrous hours 
of fighting) how skilfully some earthworks 
were going forward under the direction of a 
young captain of artillery. He sent for the 
young man, whose discourse so struck him, 
that presently (March i, 1777) he made him 
aide-de-camp with the rank of lieutenant 
colonel, and next the young man, now twenty, 
was conducting much of the correspondence 
of the older man, now fifty-five. Nick-named 
"the little lion" by a colleague, Hamilton 
was soon "my boy" to Washington. The 
boy was already famous through some 
pamphlets, and what war did for the disci- 
pline and development of his genius — for 
genius he had such as none other — must have 
been priceless to him, and so to us. What 
his genius did for Washington was equally 
inestimable. The coming together of these 
202 



two, the seasoned, sagacious intelligence, Seven 

and the winged, fiery intellect, may be Jf\ 

^ -^ > / Washington 

likened to some beneficent chemical union 
between acid and alkali, producing as it did 
the very salt of constructive common sense. 
If this had not, on the whole, prevailed during 
the stormy years that were now to set in, we 
should have been to-day but another nest of 
hornet republics, like the hemisphere to the 
south of us, or else swallowed up by a foreign 
power. Among the sundry passages that 
Washington wrote about the case of the new 
country, we take two : — 

(1785.) "The war . . . has terminated 
most advantageously for America, and a 
fair field is presented to our view; but I 
confess to you freely, my dear Sir, that I do 
not think we possess wisdom or justice enough 
to cultivate it properly. Illiberality, jealousy, 
and local policy mix too much in all our 
public councils for the good government of 
the Union. . . . The confederation appears 
203 



Seven . . . little ^Hn^jre than a shadow . . . and 

S\. Congress a nugatory body. . . . Tome . . . 

Washington ^ S J J 

it is one of the most extraordinary things in 
nature, that we should confederate as a 
nation, and yet be afraid to give the rulers 
of that nation who are the creatures of our 
making, appointed for a limited and short 
duration, and who are amenable for every 
action . , . sufficient powers to order and 
direct the affairs of the same. ... By 
such policy . . . we are descending into the 
vale of confusion and darkness. That we 
have it in our power to become one of the most 
respectable nations upon earth, admits, in 
my humble opinion, of no doubt, if we would 
but pursue a wise, just, and liberal policy 
towards one another, and keep good faith 
with the rest of the world." (This sentence 
about "good faith" arose from his seeing 
the populist instinct not to pay your creditors 
rapidly growing.) Later, 1787: "I almost 
despair of seeing a favourable issue to the pro- 
204 



ceedings of our convention, and do therefore Seven 

repent havins; had any agency in the business. ^^^ "^ 

^ ^ / b / Washington 

The men who oppose a strong and energetic 
government, are in my opinion narrow- 
minded poHticians. . . . The apprehension 
expressed by them, that the people will not 
accede to the form proposed, is the osten- 
sible, not the real cause of opposition. ... I 
am sorry you went away. I wish you were 
back." (This is to Hamilton.) 

We find more angry and more despondent 
words than these in his letters at this time, 
but what has been quoted clearly shows his 
thoughts and feelings; presently the Con- 
stitution was adopted, and next, on April 
14, 1789, a deputation from Congress waited 
on him at Mount Vernon, and formally 
announced that he was unanimously elected 
first President of the United States. "I 
wish," he replied, "that there may not be 
reason for regretting the choice." To Knox, 
his war comrade, he wrote: "In confidence, 
205 



Seven 
Ages of 
Washington 



I tell jyow"^^^ that my movement to the 
chair of Government will be accompanied 
by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who 
is going to the place of his execution/' 

Vine and fig-tree were left behind in this 
spirit, in which there is nowhere to be found 
any sign of elation, but only personal regret 
and unwillingness, and a solemn dedication 
of self to the new needs of the country. 
The greeting he met, the universal shout of 
loyalty, when he stepped forth upon the 
balcony at his inauguration, caused him to 
falter and sit down, and this brought a silence 
as intense and universal as the cheering had 
been. Thus he took his oath, and then 
turned to enter a maze of troubles of every 
size and shape, from the petty follies about 
the etiquette of his receptions to the question 
how the American people could be persuaded 
to pay their debts both domestic and foreign. 
There was scarce a meanness too small or a 
blindness too great for some of the chief 
206 



citizens of that day; and everything was Seven - 

brought to him, or if it was not brought, ^f^"^, 

^ ^ Washington 

the responsibihty of deahng with it fell 
upon him nevertheless, and he got the blame 
whenever any one was not pleased. "We 
have probably had too good an opinion of 
human nature in forming our confederation," 
he had written a little while before, and 
what he now began to experience was not 
likely to disabuse him of this opinion, but 
only to send him back to the same philosophy 
he had once preached to General Schuyler 
to "make the best of mankind as they are, 
since we can not have them as we wish." 
Etiquette, then (as to which Hamilton, 
Adams, and Jefferson all differed), had to be 
established, just how much and how little 
there should be, and this practical question 
was complicated not only by differences of 
opinion, but by not a little false and ridiculous 
gossip. Some of this is eagerly set down by 
Jefferson in his book of malice that he called 
207 



Seven 
Ages of 
Washington 



Anas, wher^inj^e has written himself down a 
character to which his worst enemy could 
scarce add a syllable. He describes Washing- 
ton and Mrs. Washington as sitting on a sort 
of throne during a ball, at which, as a matter 
of fact, they were on the floor dancing during 
the whole evening. Indian troubles, secretly 
fomented by the English, harassed our 
frontier, and a great disaster was suffered, 
the news of which caused one of those out- 
breaks of violent emotion to which Washing- 
ton was subject. His general health showed 
signs of the worries he lived daily in, among 
which the greatest, possibly, was the problem 
of finance. The doctrine of not paying your 
debts was offered in various sugar-coated 
forms of rhetoric as a principle that should 
form part of our national policy. Taxation 
was felt to be an insult to American freedom, 
and a strong party came into existence whose 
aim may be fairly said to have been to re- 
solve our Republic into a "society for the 
208 



avoidance of personal obligations" — to Seven 

quote the admirable words of Mr. Oliver in Jf\ 

^ Washington 

his study of Alexander Hamilton. "Ac- 
cording to the practice of demagogy," this 
writer continues, "the doctrine of repudiation 
was . . . raised to a higher moral plane. 
In the twilight of words and phrases the 
seductive idea, like a lady of doubtful virtue 
and waning beauty, was arranged in a char- 
itable and becoming shadow. . . ." Thomas 
Jefferson favored all these things ; he worked 
out one of his ingenious quackeries to show 
the iniquity of creating a national debt. We 
had no moral right to make a loan that our 
children must pay; he produced arithmetic 
to show that nineteen years is the length of 
a generation, and he advocated that any 
debt still unpaid after nineteen years should 
be extinguished. It may be imagined how 
attractive such a scheme would be to a " so- 
ciety for the avoidance of personal obliga- 
tions," and how dear to the hearts of "the 
^ 209 



Seven people " '•^Ji^Qer son thus made himself; it 

S\ rn^y also be imagined with what heartiness 

M^asni?igton ■' ^ 

Holland, or any other country, would have 
responded to our application for money, 
if such doctrines had prevailed. Shea's 
Rebellion — one of our paper-money episodes 
of insanity, and at core a local phase of re- 
pudiation — had a few years earlier revealed 
the ideas of the society for the avoidance of 
personal obligation, and for this demonstra- 
tion Jefferson had nothing but praise. "God 
forbid," he said, "that we should be twenty 
years without a rebellion. . . . The tree 
of liberty must be refreshed from time to 
time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. 
It is its natural manure." From this sprightly 
and vivacious doctrine he excepted himself; 
when Tarleton and his raiders came too near 
the Virginia legislature, he fled with a prompt- 
ness that showed conclusively he had no in- 
tention his own blood should refresh the tree 
of liberty. The still more comprehensive 

210 



doctrine, that if any man happened to dis- Seven 

like any law, it was his American perquisite ^^^ °^ 

■' Washington 

and sacred right to break such law, was 
another of the menacing undercurrents dur- 
ing Washington's first term, and during his 
second it broke out in the Whiskey Insur- 
rection. It was deemed by true JefFer- 
sonians, such as Edmund Randolph, a 
despotic outrage upon liberty that troops 
should be sent to enforce order and obedience 
to the law. These are the "principles'* 
that we have inherited from Thomas Jeffer- 
son — if it can be said that he had any fixed 
principles — and it is no wonder that he 
remains a popular idol; the real wonder is, 
that Washington, who threw his whole force 
against such principles, and with Hamilton's 
help largely defeated them, should remain 
a popular idol too. It is most natural that 
Hamilton, the greatest benefactor our young 
country knew, except Washington, should have 
no popularity whatever, although his great- 
211 



Seven ness is begfttiiiiig at last to emerge and estab- 

1!\ lish itself in the general knowledge of man- 

Washtngton ^ ^ 

kind. Lest the reader, not fresh from any 
first-hand examination of Jefferson, but only 
aware of him through a sort of traditional 
hearsay, should be tempted to doubt the 
phrase above as to Jefferson's instability of 
convictions, let him read and ponder the 
following sentence : — 

"When any one state in the American union 
refuses obedience to the Confederation to 
which they have bound themselves the rest have 
the natural right to compell it to obedience." 
The expounder of states-rights wrote this. It 
may be found in Ford's " Writings of Thomas 
Jefferson," Vol. iv, page 147. 

Through Thomas Jefferson there ran one 
sincere thread of belief — his faith in man- 
kind, and for this he is beloved of the multi- 
tude without any investigation as to how 
much concrete benefit to mankind resulted 
from his faith. Phrases indeed he coined — 
212 



nobody more elegantly or prolifically, but Seven 

(again to use Mr. Oliver's words) "no ^^\°J 
^ ^ ^ Washington 

power could translate them into policy or 
law, because they did not correspond with 
any translatable human facts. For the greater 
part they were only words, and for the rest 
they were the fancies of a poet." We, far 
away from the malice and disloyalty Jeffer- 
son measured out not alone to his political 
foes, but to friends of whose reputation he 
grew jealous, can feel his personal fascina- 
tion. Such keen outlook, such vivacious 
curiosity as to all things, such engaging 
fancy and diction, make him a wonderful 
being; he stands the incomparable dabbler, 
the illustrious dilettante, of his day. As 
the writer of the Declaration of Indepen- ^ 

dence, he lives permanently with those great 
founders of our Republic, whom we shall 
never forget; as the consummator of the 
Louisiana Purchase (a total departure from 
his own "principles") we owe him equal 
213 



Seven or deepei>§j^Itude ; but if his political co- 

rrr\ hcrence, his constructive statesmanship, is 

vvasntngton *■ 

examined, it crumbles away, leaving noth- 
ing but a faith in mankind amid a cloud of 
dust. 

Worry over the mischief made, and the 
more mischief attempted, by those who 
corresponded in that day to the "green- 
backers," the "farmers' alliance," and the 
"populists" of later days, impaired Wash- 
ington's health, and also fatigued and dis- 
enchanted him in his ceaseless effort to set 
the infant Republic on its legs. The infant 
Republic struggled tooth and nail against 
this; in fact, toward every measure adopted 
for its soundness and permanence, the infant 
Republic may be likened in its conduct to an 
ill-conditioned, squalling brat, disgusting all 
save its most patient guardians. Washing- 
ton would have been very glad to be free of 
the whole business; but the brat, genuinely 
scared lest the parent whom it had been 
214 



biting and scratching should abandon it Seven 

to its own devices, clung to him, not in grati- rfr\ 

' ^ ^ Washington 

tude, but in terror. Even Jefferson, who had 
been opposed to the Administration's poHcy, 
and, though a member of the cabinet, was 
encouraging newspaper attacks upon it — 
if he did not actually dictate many of the 
articles himself — even Jefferson wished 
Washington to stay. Jefferson's most useful 
trait, perhaps, was a power to drop all his 
theories in the face of a crisis, and do the 
practical thing. "North and South will 
hang together if they have you to hang on," 
he said; and Washington stayed — but here 
is how he felt: — 

"To say I feel pleasure from the prospect 
of commencing another tour of duty would 
be a departure from truth; for, however it 
might savor of affectation in the opinion of 
the world (who, by the by, can only guess at 
my sentiments, as it never has been troubled 
with them), my particular and confidential 
215 



Seven friends well know, that it was after a long and 

S^\ painful conflict in my own breast, that I was 

Washington ^ ■' 

withheld (by considerations which are not 
necessary to be mentioned) from requesting 
in time, that no vote might be thrown away 
upon me, it being my fixed determination to 
return to the walks of private life at the end 
of my term." 

But he could not do so, and well it is for 
our present existence that he did not do so. 
Nothing but the confidence and love he 
filled the people with over the heads and 
beyond the voices of the papers and politi- 
cians could have tided us through the dangers 
which now not only came to us without 
invitation, but which the papers and poli- 
ticians also loudly invited. Washington was 
not a party man; he says of himself, "party 
disputes are now carried to such a length, 
and truth is so enveloped in mist and false 
representation, that it is extremely difficult 
to know through what channel to seek it. 
2l6 



This difficulty to one who is of no party, Seven 

and whose sole wish is to pursue with un- Jf\°-^ 

Washington 

deviating steps a path, which would lead this 
country to respectability, wealth, and hap- 
piness, is exceedingly to be lamented." In 
this same spirit he made appointments, 
writing a favorite nephew who had asked him 
for one, "however deserving you may be . . . 
your standing would not justify my nomina- 
tion of you ... in preference to some of the 
ablest and most esteemed . . . lawyers. . . . 
My political conduct in nominations, even if 
I were uninfluenced by principle, must be 
exceedingly circumspect. . . ." The use of 
his name in a Maryland election brought to 
the culprit one of his very severe rebukes: 
"I was not a little displeased to find . . . my 
name had been freely used by you or your 
friends . . . when I had never associated 
your name and the election together. . . . 
There had been the most scrupulous and 
pointed caution ... on my part not to 
217 



Seven express a s^Jtiment respecting the fitness or 

Jf\ unfitness of any candidate for representation. 

Washington -^ ^ 

. . . The exercise of an influence would be 
highly improper; as the people ought to be 
entirely at liberty to chuse whom they pleased 
to represent them in Congress." But this 
highmindedness was lost upon the screaming 
infant Repubhc, feverish with that disease 
not yet exterminated, and always fatal if 
not kept in check, the disease of plebiscitis. 
Sickened by the treatment he received, 
Washington speaks without reserve, once, to 
Jefferson : " . . . nor did I believe until lately 
. . . that, while I was using my utmost exer- 
tions to establish a national character of our 
own, independent, as far as our obligations 
and justice would permit, of every nation of 
the earth, . . . every act of my administra- 
tion would be tortured . . . and that too in 
such exaggerated and indecent terms as could 
scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious 
defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." 
2i8 



A delirious dread of Washington's becom- Seven 

ing king — he pronounced it insane himself ,^^\°^ 
^ ^ ^ Washington 

to Jefferson, who feared, or made beheve to 
fear it — was continually fomented by the 
papers, of which he took no public notice; 
but his letters are full of the evidences of his 
feelingo "In a word," he writes Edmund 
Randolph before the scandal of the French 
minister had ended their relations, "if the 
government and the offices of it are to be 
the constant theme for newspaper abuse, 
and this too without condescending to in- 
vestigate the motives or the facts, it will be 
impossible, I conceive, for any man living to 
manage the helm or to keep the machine 
together/' 

It is curious to read those newspapers of 
the 1790's and see how much time has mod- 
erated the violence of words, though not at 
all the poison of slander and sensation. It 
could not be printed to-day that "the eldest 
son of Satan, Albert Gallatin, arrived in 
219 



Seven town yesterday afternoon/' They dared 

^^^ ^ not go so^ftMkwith Washinp;ton's name, but 

Washington ° 

they spent much ingenuity upon him. In a 
sort of burlesque dictionary, pubHshed in 
Freneau's Gazette, Philadelphia, 24 April, 
1793, we find : ''Great man. Excellent judge 
of horse-flesh." And again, "Valerius" (or 
"Brutus" or "PubHus") writes: "If the 
form of monarchy was exalted among us, a 
national love of liberty would rally all 
around the standard of opposition, except 
the minions of the idol." Once more: 
"The temple of Liberty, like that of Vesta, 
should never be without a centinel. . . . 
Were I to see public servants excluding 
private citizens from their tables, I should 
not hesitate to sound the alarm." We may 
wonder, if every American had the right to 
dine with his President, how long the cook 
would stay. Let us see what the hapless 
public servant had to say about this last 
accusation: "Between the hours of three 
220 



and four every Tuesday, I am prepared to Seven 

receive. . . . Gentlemen, often in great num- ^^^ "-^ 

Washington 

bers, come and go, chat with each other, 
and act as they please. . . . Similar . . . 
are the visits every Friday afternoon to Mrs. 
Washington, where I always am. — These — 
and a dinner once a week to as many as my 
table will hold — are as much, if not more, 
than I am able to undergo; for I have al- 
ready had, within less than a year, two severe 
attacks — the last one worse than the first. 
A third, more than probably, will put me to 
sleep with my fathers." To this, let the 
following, with its unconscious pathos and 
irony be appended. "31st July, 1797. Dear 
Sir: I am alone at present . . . unless 
some one pops in unexpectedly, Mrs. Wash- 
ington and myself will do what I believe has 
not been done in the last twenty years by 
us — that is to set down to dinner by our- 
selves.'* 

During these first momentous years, two 
221 



Seven forces — the perennial forces of our Com- 

^^^ °J monwealtnJ^He Federal power and the State 

Washington 

power — were to be apportioned and pro- 
portioned, and between these Washington's 
strength was continually ground. Any event, 
any question, whether domestic or foreign, 
set them raging. Had the centrifugal force 
outbalanced the other, we should have been 
all tire and no axle; the wheels of the Re- 
public would have sunk in splinters. Those 
who dreaded on the other hand that we 
should be all axle and no tire, pushed their 
dread rather fantastically; but certainly, if 
the wheels are to stay sound and turning, 
we need the perpetual, adjusted equilibrium 
of those two forces; the United States are 
a federation, each one remaining a whole 
as regards each of the others, though it be a 
part as regards the whole. But upon Wash- 
ington the grinding told, and with the ill 
consequences to his health came some not 
surprising signs of increasing irascibility. 
222 



Several references to violent outbreaks on Seven 

his part have been made; the news of St. ^^^\ 

^ Washington 

Clair's defeat by the Indians had caused one 
of these, narrated by the single person in 
whose presence it occurred. Of another, 
which took place in the presence of the whole 
cabinet, Jefferson gives the account. " Knox 
in a foolish. Incoherent sort of speech intro- 
duced the Pasquinade lately printed, called 
the funeral of George Washington, and 
James Wilson, King and Judge, &c., where 
the President was placed on a guillotine. The 
President was much inflamed, got into one of 
those passions when he can not command 
himself, ran on to the personal abuse which 
had been bestowed on him, defied any man 
on earth to produce one single act of his since 
he had been in the government which was not 
done on the purest motives, that he had 
never repented but once the having slipped the 
moment of resigning his office, and that was 
every moment since, that hy God he would 
223 



Washington 



Seven rather be in his grave than in his present 

Jf\ situation. '"'^tat he had rather be on his 

farm than to be made emperor of the world 
and yet that they were charging him with 
wanting to be a King. . . . He ended in 
this high tone. There was a pause. Some 
difficulty in resuming our question." 

Poor, beset, bull-baited Washington ! 
The mind, even all these years after, feels a 
shock of anger and shame that he should 
have tasted an ingratitude so insensate and 
bestial. The " voice of the people,'' Jeffer- 
son's divine guide, has never (in this coun- 
try) more clearly shown that it can be, on 
occasion, the voice of hell. 

A cartoon, showing Washington upon the 
guillotine (which was never an instrument of 
execution in this country), is curiously sig- 
nificant of how closely the French Revolution 
grazed us, how mixed and kneaded in it was 
with our popular imagination. No other 
foreign event has ever come so near us, 
224 



has ever so occupied the general mind, has Seven 

ever so endangered our own existence. Jf\ 

^ Washington 

That convulsion, while it was ripping France 
open and tearing it down, and while it was 
threatening to shake the whole house of 
Europe to pieces, sent undulations over 
here that would infallibly have split our 
walls too, but for the firm back of Washing- 
ton, propped against them. He distrusted 
the French Revolution from the first, when 
Jefferson was gleefully hailing it as the dawn 
of the millennium. His letters, wishing the 
cause of liberty well, betray a reserve as to 
the method in which the French are seeking 
liberty, and this doubt increases until it ends 
in horrified repudiation of what was being 
done; "the summit of despotism'* is his 
brief opinion of it. But there was a loud 
party here that did not discriminate; it was 
mainly composed of those who regarded 
taxation as a symptom of monarchy, and 
understood a republic to mean the right to 
Q 225 



Seven break any law that displeased you; but we 

Jges of ^^ , , . . 

Washington ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ people what justice we can. 

There was a wide and righteous gratitude 
to France for what she had done to help our 
own Revolution, and there was a treaty with 
her, besides an equally wide and natural 
hatred of England, with whom France was 
presently at war. Where these people failed 
to discriminate was in their inability to see 
that the France who had helped us, the France 
of Lafayette and Rochambeau, of Louis XVI, 
was not the France they wished to befriend in 
return; our France had been pulled down 
by a mob, and it was not even to its ruins, 
but to the mob, that American sympathy was 
directed. Bache's paper of May 25, 1793, 
expresses the general belief in saying: "The 
fact will be found to be, that the French 
understand the principles of a free govern- 
ment — that the English do not." Nothing 
that Washington did brought him bitterer 
hate than his stand for neutrality when 
226 



England went to war with France. The Seven 

French party here would have rushed this .Z*^^, 

^ ^ Washington 

tottering young country into a European 
strife. Some one from Pittsburgh writes to 
Freneau's Gazette: "Louis Capet has lost 
his Caput. From my use of a pun, it may 
seem that I think lightly of his fate. I cer- 
tainly do." And the same paper later 
addresses Washington: "Sir . . . The 
cause of France is the cause of man, and 
neutrality is desertion. ... I doubt much 
whether it is the disposition of the United 
States to preserve the conduct you enjoin. 
. . . The American mind is indignant, and 
needs but to be roused a little to go to war 
with England and assist France." For a 
while the volatile Jefferson busily connived 
at all this, busily befriended the French 
envoy, the impudent and meddlesome Genet. 
We cannot go into the case of the Little 
Sarah, that was fitted out to aid France and 
sailed away under Jefferson's nose. There 
227 



Seven can be little doubt he was uncandid with 

ges oj Washingtol^^out this; a sentence in a 

Washington ^ 

letter from Washington to Henry Lee is 
highly significant; but when he came face 
to face with the results of his ill-judged pat- 
ronage of Genet, and found that this political 
adventurer proposed to appeal to the Amer- 
ican people against the decision of the Pres- 
ident, he came back to his senses for a while. 
Genet, according to his successor, Fauchet, 
showed "more personal hatred for Wash- 
ington than love for France.'' Fauchet 
himself turned out a rascal later, and Adet, 
who followed him, was as bad. These 
people, sent to us by French "liberty," form 
a curious contrast with Lafayette, de Grasse, 
Rochambeau, Chastellux, and the others who 
came to us from French "despotism." Wash- 
ington's proclamation of neutrality saved us 
from a peril that might well have been fatal, 
and the "American mind," in spite of the 
newspaper, accepted the President's judg- 
228 



ment. "Fll tell you what/* said John Adams Seven 
to the Spanish minister, Yrujo, a young man z£ , 
very free and easy in his manners, as Wash- 
ington describes him, "the French republic 
will not last three months;'' and Adams 
shook his finger at Yrujo. Jefferson quotes 
this with malicious relish, as showing what a 
fool Adams was. The French republic did 
last longer than three months. It was pro- 
claimed in 1792. In one year they abolished 
the Calendar and the Christian era, renamed 
all the months, and started a new era with the 
year one. They then abolished Christianity 
itself; Robespierre dancing in front of the 
image of Reason, while flowers were strewed 
about. This performance was entitled the 
"Picnic of the Supreme Being." Then 
they cut off Robespierre's head — he was not 
advanced enough for them — and children 
were given toy guillotines, which cut off 
doll's heads, from which spurted red syrup. 
This was the real France, with which the 
229 



Seven "American mind" felt such sympathy; a 

^g^^ of France ofTHiirs of blood, in which danced 

Washington 

monkeys and assassins. Even the flighty 
Jefi^erson's vision of the millennium v^as 
troubled during the Reign of Terror, and we 
find him writing a very mixed metaphor to 
the eflTect that "the arm of the people" is 
"blind to a certain degree." After 1792, 
France was republic, directorate, consulate, 
monarchy, and empire, changing its form of 
government ten times in eighty years. We 
recall and assemble these familiar facts in 
order that against their background the 
reader may more instantly see the value of 
Washington's neutrality, and the folly of the 
very powerful and clamorous party who 
denounced it; but to see these things fully, 
the newspapers of that day should be read. 
From the many echoes of doubt and dis- 
trust in our stability caused by the resistance 
to taxation and the sympathy with the 
French Revolution, we select a few lines 
230 



written from Congress by the same Jeremiah Seven 

Smith who became chief justice of New ^^^ ^ 

Washington 

Hampshire : — 

"You perceive that we have been, I may 
say still are, on the edge of a precipice, ready 
to take a leap into the abyss of confusion. . . . 
God knows howthis ship of ours will sail, when 
the present pilot quits the helm. If we may 
judge from present appearances, she will 
inevitably founder." 

From the pilot's own letters we select and 
place together for the last time some sentences 
dealing with a few of his problems — many 
of them still our problems — and showing the 
man himself after his encounter with them. 

"The difference of conduct between the 
friends and foes of . . . good government, 
is . . . that the latter are always working 
like bees to distil their poison; whilst the 
former, depending often times too much 
and too long upon the sense and good disposi- 
tion of the people to work conviction, neglect 
231 



Seven the means of effecting it. . . . My opinion 

^f^""^ with respect*^o emigration is that except of 
Washington r -^^^ & ^ 

useful mechanics and some particular de- 
scription of men or professions, there is no 
need of encouragement, while the policy or 
advantage of its taking place in a body . . . 
may be much questioned : for by so doing, 
they retain the Language, habits and prin- 
ciples (good or bad) which they bring with 
them. . . . Never forget that we are Amer- 
icans, the remembrance of which will con- 
vince us that we ought not to be French or 
English. . . . [The following shows how 
early a certain habit of visitors from abroad 
began.] The remarks of a foreign Count 
are such as do no credit to his judgment, 
and as little to his heart. They are the 
superficial observations of a few months' 
^residence, and an insult to the inhabitants 
of a country, where he has received much 
more attention and civility than he seems to 
merit. . . ." [It was also bound to begin 
232 



early, that representatives elected to repre- Seven 

sent should misrepresent those who elected Jf\ 

^ Washington 

them, and this seems to have come to a 
considerable head at the time of Jay's treaty 
with England, an understanding which 
France did her best to prevent.] The 
treaty, said Washington, "does not rise to 
all our wishes, yet it appears to be cal- 
culated to procure to the United States 
such advantages as entitle it to our accept- 
ance. . . . People living at a distance know 
not how to believe it possible that . . . 
representatives . . . can speak a language 
which is repugnant to the sense of their 
constituents. . . . Whatever my own opin- 
ion may be . . . it . . . will continue to be 
my earnest desire to learn, and, as far as 
consistent, to comply with, the public senti- 
ment; but it is on great occasions on/y, and 
after time has been given for cool and de- 
liberate reflection, that the real voice of the 
people can be known. ... I am sure the 



Seven mass of citizens in these United States mean 

Jr^\ well, and>^^rmly believe they will always 

act well whenever they can obtain a right 
understanding . . . but in some parts of the 
Union, where the sentiments of their dele- 
gates and leaders are adverse to the govern- 
ment, and great pains are taken to inculcate 
a belief that their rights are assailed and their 
liberties endangered, it is not easy to accom- 
plish this; especially, as is the case invari- 
ably, when the inventors and abettors of 
pernicious measures use infinite more in- 
dustry in disseminating the poison, than the 
well-disposed part of the community to fur- 
nish the antidote. . . " 

As has been said, he began as a man of no 
party, but became inevitably ranged with 
the Federalists; his political affinity with 
Hamilton, his affection for him — ever warmer 
as the years went on — and his modest 
recognition of Hamilton's superior gifts in 
statesmanship, led him to go to his friend with 
234 



every question that he was pondering, even Seven 

small ones. Adet, the third unsatisfactory Jf\'^-^ 

Washington 

envoy from France, had published a letter to 
the Secretary of State : — 

"... v^hether the publication in the man- 
ner it appears is by order of the Directory, 
or an act of his ov^n, is yet to be learnt. If 
the first, he has executed a duty only; if 
the latter, he exceeded it, and is himself 
responsible for the indignity offered to this 
Government by such publication, v^ithout 
allowing it time to reply. ... In either 
case, should there be in your opinion any 
difference in my reception and treatment of 
that Minister in his visits at the public 
Rooms (I have not seen him yet, nor do not 
expect to do it before Tuesday next) — and 
what difference should be made if any.?" 
To which Hamilton answers: — 
"The true rule on this point would be to 
receive the Minister at your levees with a 
dignified reserve, holding an exact medium 

235 



Seven between an offensive coldness and cordiality, 

g^s oj "Y\\e point is a nice one to be hit, but no one 

Washington 

will know how to do it better than the Pres- 
ident/' 

We dwell not upon his Farewell Ad- 
dress, his own idea and work — though it 
benefited by the criticism of Hamilton ; it 
needs no mention here; we finish with 
a few further examples of his opinions. 
"I was in hopes that motives of policy as 
well as other good reasons supported by 
the direful effects of slavery . . . would 
have operated to produce a total pro- 
hibition of the importation of slaves. . . . 
Were it not that I am principled against 
selling negroes ... I would not in twelve 
months from this date be possessed of one, 
as a slave. I shall be happily mistaken if 
they are not found to be very troublesome 
species of property ere many years pass over 
our heads. . . . We are all the children of 
the same country. . . . Our interest ... is 
236 



the same. . . . My system . . . has uni- Seven 

formly been ... to contemplate the United ^^^ °-' 

Washington 

States as one great whole ... for sure I 
am, if this country is preserved in tranquillity 
twenty years longer, it may bid defiance in a 
just cause to any power whatever; such in 
that time will be its population, wealth and 
resources. . . . [The next regards the Fed- 
eral City which he had in mind.] I take 
the liberty of sending you the plan of a new 
city, situated about the centre of the Union of 
these States, which is designated for the 
permanent seat of government. ... A cen- 
tury hence if this country keeps united (and 
it is surely its policy and interest to do it) 
will produce a city, though not so large as 
London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few 
others in Europe, on the banks of the Po- 
tomac . . . where elegant buildings are erect- 
ing and in forwardness for the reception of 
Congress in the year 1800. . . . [This 
concerns his third term.] It would be a 



Seven matter of sore regret to me, if I could believe 

g^^ y" jj^^^ 2 serious thought was turned towards 

Washington 

me . . . for, although I have abundant 
cause to be thankful for the good health with 
which I am blessed, yet I am not insensible 
to my declination in other respects. It 
would be criminal, therefore, in me, although 
it would be the wish of my countrymen . . . 
to accept an office . . . which another would 
discharge with more ability." 

This is the person whom they pictured 
on the guillotine; the author of that Fare- 
well Address more times printed than any 
American state document; and this is the 
person of whom the newspaper, Bache's 
Aurora, said upon his retiring from the 
presidency: "If ever a Nation was de- 
bauched by a man, the American Nation 
has been debauched by Washington." 

So much patience of mind seems never to 
have belonged to any other great public 
man; to take difficult thoughts, one by one, 

238 



and march slowly to their end, and so to Seven 

reach conclusions which were impregnable ^^^ °-^ 

^ ^ Washington 

then, and which time itself has left unassailed, 
this was his preeminent quality. Very 
different he was from the ingenious, better- 
educated Jefferson, whose mind leaped lightly 
to attractive generalizations, which the ruth- 
less test of actuality finds to be mostly rub- 
bish. The two may be styled the hare and 
the tortoise of our Independence. One 
other great quality comes forth from all 
Washington's deeds and words, like a beauti- 
ful glow; its lustre seems to shine in every 
page that he writes, and in all his dealings with 
men, with ideas, with himself; it is the quality 
of simplicity. Our fathers had it more than 
we of to-day, and it would be well for us if we 
could regain it. The Englishman of to-day 
is superior to us in it; he has in general, 
no matter what his station, a quiet way of 
doing and of being, of letting himself alone, 
that we in general lack. We cannot seem 

239 



Seven to let ourselves alone; we must talk when 

g^^ Of there is nothing to say; we must joke — 

Washington & / ' J 

especially we must joke — when there is no 
need for it, and when nobody asks to be enter- 
tained. This is the nervousness of democ- 
racy; we are uncertain if the other man 
thinks we are "as good" as he is; therefore 
we must prove that we are, at first sight, by 
some sort of performance. Such doubt 
never occurs to the established man, to the 
man whose case is proven; he is not thinking 
about what we think of him. So the Indian, 
so the frontiersman, so the true gentleman, 
does not live in this restlessness. Nor did 
Washington ; and therefore he moved always 
in simplicity, that balanced and wholesome 
ease of the spirit, which when it comes among 
those who must be showing off from moment 
to moment, shines like a quiet star upon 
fireworks. 

And how did the man who had been twice 
President now look ? The descriptions of 
240 



him belonging to this period tell of changes. Seven 

Less mention is made of his agreeable smile, ,£^^, 

^ Washington 

his cheerful serenity, his pleasant talk; it 
is his gravity, his reticence, even his melan- 
choly — this is the record. Is it surprising 
in one who, w^hen reticence w^as during an 
angry moment broken, had declared that he 
would rather be in his grave than in his 
present situation ? If Arnold had added a 
furrow to his face, there must have been 
many new ones by this time; but here is one 
word about himself, written in considerable 
indignation, that unveils something of the 
depths he usually concealed: "Whether you 
have, upon any occasion, expressed yourself 
in disrespectful terms of me, I know not — 
it has never been the subject of my enquiry. 
If nothing impeaching my honor or honesty 
is said, I care little for the rest. I have 
pursued one uniform course for threescore 
years, and am happy in believing that the 
world have thought it a right one — of it's 
R 241 



Seven being so, I am so well satisfied myself, that I 

£^^/-^ shall not depart from it by turning: either to 

Washington ^ J b 

the right or to the left, until I arrive at the 
end of my pilgrimage." 

An agreeable and graphic account of 
Washington the President is given in the 
privately published memoirs of Mr. Charles 
Biddle, a distinguished Philadelphian of that 
day: — 

"When he was elected President of the 
United States, he lived during the whole of 
the time that he was in Philadelphia nearly 
opposite to me. At that time I saw him 
almost daily. I frequently attended levees 
to introduce some friend or acquaintance, 
and called sometimes with Governor Mifflin. 
The General always behaved politely to the 
Governor, but it appeared to me he had not 
forgotten the Governor's opposition to him 
during the Revolutionary war. He was a 
most elegant figure of a man, with so much 
dignity of manners, that no person whatever 
242 



could take any improper liberties with him. Seven 

I have heard Mr. Robert Morris, who was ^^^ ^ 

Washington 

as intimate with him as any man in America, 
say that he was the only man in whose pres- 
ence he felt any awe. You would seldom 
see a frown or a smile on his countenance, 
his air was serious and reflecting, yet I have 
seen him in the theatre laugh heartily. Dr. ^ 

Forrest, who laughs a great deal, desired 
me one night at the theatre, to look at 
General Washington. ' See how he laughs, 
by the Lord he must be a gentleman.' 
The General was in the next box, and I 
believe heard him. He was much more 
cheerful when he was retiring from office 
of President than I had ever seen him be- 
fore. Commodore Barry, Major Jackson, 
and myself were appointed a Committee 
of the Society of Cincinnati to wait upon 
him with a copy of an address, and to know 
when it would be convenient for the Society 
to wait upon him. He received us with great ^ 

243 



Seven good humor, and laughing, told us that he 

'^'^^, had heard Governor Morris (I believe of 

Washington 

New Jersey) say that when he knew gentle- 
menwere going to call on him with an address, 
he sent to beg they would bring an answer. 
If this were done to him, he observed that it 
would save him a great deal of trouble. He 
was in Philadelphia a short time before he 
died, and I thought he never looked better 
than he did at that time. . . . He was 
called the American Fabius, but Fabius was 
not equal to George Washington. He suf- 
fered Tarentum to be pillaged when it was 
traitorously delivered to him, and his op- 
position and jealousy of Scipio rendered the 
Roman unequal to the American hero." 

It Is upon the day of his release, the day 
when public burdens fell from him, and the 
vine and fig-tree began to draw near in his 
hopes, that we shall take our farewell look 
at him. His successor, John Adams, had 
finished taking his oath; Washington turned 
244 



to leave the assembly, and at this sight, all Seven 

who could do so crowded from their places to Jf\ 

Washington 

the hall, that they might see the last of him. 
He passed through their cheering to the street, 
where in answer he waved his hat, " his 
countenance radiant with benignity, his grey 
hairs streaming in the wind." It is from the 
lips of an eye-witness that Irving gives this 
account. "The crowd followed him to his 
door; there, turning round, his countenance 
assumed a grave and almost melancholy 
expression, his eyes were bathed in tears, 
his emotions were too great for utterance, 
and only by gestures could he indicate his 
thanks and convey his farewell blessing." 
Three years of quiet he lived to see, and 
then was dead after brief illness, able to ride 
his horse to within three days of the end, 
and ready to take the command against 
France in case of war. He seemed to know 
his illness was indeed the end, although, 
during the twenty hours of its progress he let 

245 



Sfven them try what remedies they wished; when 

^^\°-' at last his friend Dr. Craik sat on his bed, 

Ws^hington 

and took his head in his lap, he said with 
difficulty: "Doctor, I am dying, and have 
been dying for a long time, but I am not 
afraid to die/' 



246 



VII. IMMORTALITY 



M 




Washington Monument. 



VII 

Go, when the day is fine, down the river Seven 
to Mount Vernon. There, following the t£^V 
path up from the shore among the trees, 
you will slowly come to where his tomb is, 
the simple vault half up the hill, which vines 
partly cover, built according to his directions. 
From this you will still ascend among grass 
and trees, and pass up by old buildings, old 
barns, an old coach-house with the coach in it, 
and so come to the level green upon which the 
house gives with its connecting side offices at 
either flank. Inside the house, all through 
the rooms of bygone comfort so comfortable 
still, so mellowed with the long sense of home, 
you will feel the memory of his presence 
strangely, and how much his house is like 
him. He seems to come from his battles and 
249 



of 
Washington 



Seven his austere fame, and to be here by the fire- 

place. Here are some of his very books on 
the shelves, here the stairs he v^ent up and 
down, here in the hall his swords, and the 
key of the Bastille that Lafayette sent to 
him. Upstairs is the room he died in, and 
the bed; still above this chamber, the little 
room where Martha Washington lived her 
last years after his death, with its window 
looking out upon the tomb where he was first 
laid. Everything, every object, every corner 
and step, seems to bring him close, not in the 
way of speaking of him or breathing of him, 
as some memorial places seem to speak and 
breathe their significance ; a silence fills these 
passages and rooms, a particular motionless- 
ness, that is not changed or disturbed by the 
constant moving back and forth of the visitors. 
What they do, their voices, their stopping 
and bending to look at this or that, does not 
seem to affect, or even to reach, the strange 
influence that surrounds them. It is an 
250 



exquisite and friendly serenity which bathes Seven 

one's sense, that brines him so near, that seems ,£^^ , ^ 

^ Washington 

to be charged all through with some meaning 
or message of beneficence and reassurance, 
but nothing that could be put into words. 

And then, not staying too long in the house, 
stroll out upon the grounds. Look away to 
the woods and fields, whence he rode home 
from hunting with Lord Fairfax, over which 
his maturer gaze roved as he watched his 
crops and his fences, and to which his majestic • 
figure came back with pleasure and relief 
from the burdens and the admiration of the 
world. Turn into his garden and look at the 
walls and the walks he planned, the box hedges, 
the trees, the flower-beds, the great order and 
the great sweetness everywhere. And among 
all this, still the visitors are moving, looking, 
speaking, the men, women, and children 
from every corner of the country, some plain 
and rustic enough, some laughing and talking 
louder than need be, but all drawn here to 
251 



Seven see it, to remember it, to take it home with 

S^^ ?/ them, to be in their own ways and according 

Washington 

to their several Hghts touched by it, and no 
more disturbing the lovely peace of it than 
they disturbed the house. For again, as in 
the house, only if possible more marvellously 
still, there comes from the trees, the box 
hedges, the glimpses of the river, that serenity 
with its message of beneficence and reas- 
surance, that cannot be put into words. 
It seems to lay a hand upon all and make 
them, for a moment, one. You may spend 
an hour, you may spend a day, wandering, 
sitting, feeling this gentle power of the place ; 
you may come back another time, it meets 
you, you cannot dispel it by familiarity. 

Then go down the hill again, past the old 
buildings, past the tomb, among the trees 
to the shore. As you recede from the shore, 
you watch the place grow into the compact- 
. ness of distance, and then it seems to speak : 
"I am still here, my countrymen, to do you 
252 



what good I can." And as you think of S<^'^^^^ 

this, and bless the devotion of those whose jrr l- . 

' PVashington 

piety and care treasure the place, and keep 
it sacred and beautiful, you turn and look 
up the expanding river. From behind a 
wooded point, silent and far, the Nation's 
roof-tree, the dome of the Capitol, moves 
into sight. A turn of the river, and it moves 
behind the point again ; but now, on the other 
side of the wide water distance, rises that 
shaft built to his memory, almost seeming to 
grow from the stream itself; presently, 
shaft and dome stand out against the sky, 
with the Federal City that he prophesied, 
Union's hearth-stone and high-seat, stretching 
between them. 



253 



'' He that has light within his own clear breast 
May sit i* the centre^ and enjoy bright day.""* 



CHRONOLOGY 



255 



>" 



\sy 



CHRONOLOGY 



Date 


Events 


Age 


1657 


Emigration of John and Lawrence Washington to 

Virginia. 




1694 


Augustine Washington, father of George Washing- 
ton, born. 




1732 


Feb. 22, George Washington born in Westmore- 
land County, Virginia. 




1733-4 


Family moved to the farm now known as Mount 






Vernon 


1-2 


1743 


April 12. Death of Augustine Washington 


1 1 


1743 


George sent to live with his half-brother Augustine 






at birthplace ...... 


II 


1743-5 


Mansion built and named Mount Vernon by his 






half-brother Lawrence 


13 


1745 


He returned to live with his mother at Fredericks- 






burg. School ...... 


13 


1746 


At his mother's request gave up entering the navy . 


14 


1748 


March 1 1 . Became surveyor for Lord Fairfax 


16 


1749 


Appointed public surveyor ..... 


17 


1751 


Military inspector with rank of Major to protect 






Virginia frontier against French and Indians 


19 


1751 


Sept. Journey with invalid brother Lawrence to 






Barbadoes ....... 


19 


1752 


Adjutant-general. Sept. 26. Mount Vernon left 






him by Lawrence ..... 


20 


1753 


Mission to the frontier. Venango, Duquesne 


21 


1754 


Lieutenant-colonel. Great Meadows campaign. 
Venango, Duquesne. Ill health. Sojourns at 






Mount Vernon ...... 


22 


1755 


Aide-de-camp to General Braddock. Venango, Du- 






quesne. Commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces 


'' 



Chronology 



57 



Ch 



Date 


Events 


Age 


1756 


Military mission to New York and Boston . 


24 


1758 


Ill health. Courtship. March to the Ohio. Re- 






signed commission 


26 


1759 


Jan. 6. Married to Martha Dandridge Custis 


26 


1759 


May. Took seat in House of Burgesses 


27 


1765 


Commissioner for settling the military accounts of 






the colony ....... 


33 


1770 


Journey to the Ohio and Kenawha rivers 


38 


1774 


Member of the Virginia Convention on the points 






at issue between England and the Colonies . 


42 


1774 


Sept. Member of the First Continental Congress . 


42 


1775 


May 10. Member of the Second Continental Con- 
gress. June 15. Commander-in-chief. July 3. 






Took command at Cambridge. Siege of Boston 


43 


1776 


Mar. 17. Boston evacuated by British. Aug. 27. 
Battle of Long Island. Dec. 26. Battle of 
Trenton. Dec. 27. Invested by Congress with 






dictatorial powers ...... 


44 


1777 


Jan. 3. Battle of Princeton. Winter quarters at 
Morristown. Sept. 11. Battle of Brandy wine. 






Oct. 4. Battle of Germantown 


44-45 


1778 


Winter quarters at Valley Forge. Conway Cabal. 
June 28. Battle of Monmouth Court-house . . . 
Arrival of d'Estaing. Winter quarters at Mid- 






dlebrook 


45-46 


1779 


July 16. Capture of Stony Point 


47 


1780 


Arnold's treason ...... 


48 


1781 


Jan. 1. Pennsylvania troops mutiny. Oct. 19. 






Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown 


49 


1782 


Threatening sedition of army and talk of dictator . 


SO 


1783 


April 19. Peace proclaimed to the army. Nov. 2. 
His farewell to the army. Dec. 4. His ferewell 
to his generals. Dec. 23. He resigned his 
commission at Annapolis. Dec. 24. Home to 






Mount Vernon ...... 


51 


1784 


Journey to the western country .... 


5^ 



258 



Date 


Events 


Age 


1787 


May 14. Delegate to Constitutional Convention at 






Philadelphia. President of the Convention 


55 


1789 


President of the United States. Apr. 30. Inaugu- 
rated in New York. Journey through Eastern 






States 


57 


1791 


Journey through Southern States 


59 


1793 


Second time President of United States. The epi- 






sode of Genet, minister from France 


61 


1796 


Sept. 17. Farewell address to the people uf the 






United States ...... 


64 


1797 


Home to Mount Vernon. IVoubles with France. 






Preparations for war ..... 


65 


1798 


July 3. Commander-in-chief of the armies of the 






United States 


66 


1799 


Dec. 14. Died at Mount Vernon 


67 



Chronolog"^ 



259 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



261 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Writings of George Washington. Collected and Bibliography 

edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford. Letter- 
press Edition. G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York. 

1893. 
The Life of Washifigton, by Washington Irving. In 

8 volumes. G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York. 

1855-59. 
The True History of the Revolutiony by Sydney George 

Fisher. J. B. Lippincott Co. Philadelphia. 1902. 
Alexander Hamilton^ by Frederick Scott Oliver. G. P. 

Putnam's Sons. New York. 1907. 
Patrick Henry y by Moses Coit Tyler. Houghton, 

Mifflin & Company. Boston. 1887. 
The True Thomas Jefferson, by William Eleroy Curtis. 

J. B. Lippincott Co. Philadelphia. 1901. 
George Washington^ s Rules of Civility, by Moncure D. 

Conway. John W. Lovell Company. New York. 

1890. 
Life of the Hon. Jeremiah Smith, LL.D., by John H. 

Morison. Charles C. Little & James Brown. 

Boston. 1845. 
And the memoirs, privately published, of Benjamin Rush 

and Charles Biddle, together with the files of Fre- 

neau*s Gazette and Bache^ s Aurora, during the 

terms of Washington's presidency. 

263 



Printed in the United States of America. 



** Unquestionably the Final Edition '* of 

The Life and Letters of 
Benjamin Franklin 

Edited by Albert H. Smyth, late Professor of English Lan- 
guage and Literature in the Central High School, Philadelphia. 
In ten volumes. Cloth, i2mo, $15.00 

Special limited edition, with 
20 portraits i $30.00 



"The volume closes with a copy of Franklin's will and a series of re- 
markably complete indexes, rendering the contents of all the volumes 
easily accessible from several different points of view. The whole work 
bears evidences of painstaking care and devotion to the task for its own 
sake. It is incomparably the best and most complete edition of Franklin's 
writings in existence, containing all that is worth preserving, while in 
arrangement, editorial treatment, and mechanical workmanship it leaves 
nothing to be desired. The set is certain to have an irresistible attraction 
for admirers of Franklin and for lovers of well-made books." 

— Record-Herald, Chicago. 

" * Franklin's writings are his best biography.' To few has it been given 
to tell their own story so frankly and so fully, and with shrewd wisdom 
and such unfailing humor. We have already, on several occasions, de- 
scribed this excellent edition of Franklin, the fullest, the most accurate 
that we have ever had." — Churchman. 

"" Some interesting notes regarding the twenty rare Franklin portraits 
that have appeared in these volumes are given in the preface to Volume X. 
The most interesting portrait is the one appearing as the final volume 
frontispiece, a photogravure of the painting that originally belonged to 
Franklin, which was taken from his home in Philadelphia during the British 
occupation, and after the lapse of 130 years was presented to the United 
States by Earl Grey. It was painted in London in 1759 by Benjamin 
Wilson, and is now in the White House at Washington." 

— Boston Transcript. 



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" One of the most charming books of the season is ' The Mother of Wash- 
ington and Her Times,' by Mrs. Roger A. Pryor of New York City. It is by 
far the most accurate and lifelike pen portrait of this noble Colonial Dame ever 
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